


Silent Hill Any% Trauma Speedrun

by IspeltEclipsewrong



Series: HLSHAI [1]
Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware, Silent Hill
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Silent Hill Fusion, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Gaslighting, HLVRAI, Half-Life VR But the AI is Self-Aware, I promise you, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Major Character Death tag is purely theoretical (audience will decide the ending), Manipulation (of all kinds), No Sexual Violence, Other, also I don't think this fic gets as bad as the tags implies, but I wanna cover my bases, more specific tws will be in the notes chapter by chapter, not tagging gordon for the half life fans, once more I am begging you to split the tags, one thing is certain tho, to avoid this area getting clogged, unreality, you have my word
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:29:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27185914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IspeltEclipsewrong/pseuds/IspeltEclipsewrong
Summary: Benry never shows up to Chuck E. Cheese. Tommy gets a text from him.Tommy goes missing. Coomer goes missing. Bubby goes missing.Gordon gets a text from the Science Team.(You don't have to know Silent Hill to understand this fic!)
Relationships: TBA - Relationship
Series: HLSHAI [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2072889
Comments: 147
Kudos: 159





	1. The Call(s)

**Author's Note:**

> I tagged what I feel to be the major trigger warnings in the tags above, but there will be more specific trigger warnings in the end notes of every chapter. Please expect canon typical violence/psychological horror and check the tags if you think you might be sensitive to the subject matter.
> 
> There will be audience participation/multiple endings.
> 
> There's also an askblog version here (with a possible different ending and more interaction with the characters): https://hlshai.tumblr.com/
> 
> I hope you enjoy my fic!

Benry wasn’t at the party.

Tommy was starting to get worried. 

It was unlike him to miss something like this. Benry loved Chuck E. Cheese; he liked to beat all the high scores in the arcade until they had to reset the machines to give the actual kids a chance. Tommy thought he’d might not have regenerated fully yet, but that wouldn’t have stopped Benry from making _some_ kind of appearance. The birthday boy kept glancing around the room as if expecting a skeleton to pop out.

Despite his hopes, he saw neither hide nor hair of Benry. Or, well, bone or cartilage of him. 

It’s not like he wasn’t invited. Tommy and Benry had been friends for too long for one epic battle to come between them. Tommy and the others (minus Gordon) understood that someone needed to be the final boss. Benry had been the one to bite that bullet for all of them. He was almost grateful.

Gordon, well… Gordon would understand, eventually, right? He’d forgiven Bubby for his hand, so why wouldn’t he forgive Benry? They’d even worked together again until Xen, where only Benry got hurt. Gordon would come around. Tommy was sure of it.

Yeah.

As much as Tommy wanted all his friends to be friends, he wanted all his friends to be present moreso. It had been weeks since they’d gotten back from Black Mesa. The Science Team had all been trying to readjust to life outside- Bubby for the first time in his life. They hung out a few times in neutral spaces like cafes and parks. Gordon in particular said he didn’t want them over at his home yet. Apparently he was in the process of moving.

Tommy knew that Benry could regenerate from just a few atoms, or a polygon, or a line of code. There was no way that he was dead for real. He’d even asked his father and had been told that G-Man had arranged for his friend to be dropped off at Chuck E. Cheese. So why hadn’t he come to his birthday party?

Tommy was getting worried that, perhaps, he had somehow hurt Benry beyond what could be forgiven. Was Benry bitter that he’d had to take on the boss fight alone? Did he hate Tommy and the others now? The thought stole Tommy’s sleep from him. He spent all night gazing at the faded glow-in-the-dark stickers on his ceiling with his hands buried in Sunkist’s fur. The dog snuffled in her sleep. 

His phone chimed with the Minecraft skeleton noise and he shot upwards in bed to reach for it. He almost knocked over his glass of water and a picture frame in the process. His heart pounded as his fingers wrapped around metal and glass. Tommy unlocked his phone, filling his bedroom with an eerie blue glow.

Benry had finally texted him. 

He got out of bed and started to get dressed. Sunkist watched him from the bed, awoken by her master’s franticness. She let out a low whine and a boof. Tommy patted her idly as he passed by but didn’t move to get her leash. He’d leave a note for his father on the fridge. He grabbed his phone, his keys, and a soda for the road. 

He needed to go pick up his friend.

* * *

Tommy had been missing for two days.

The aura around Mr. Coolatta was so cold that it burned. It felt like just standing too close would give you frostbite and it was probably true. He never had to wonder where his son was. As a father, and a godbeing, he had a sixth sense for these things. If Tommy didn’t want to be found that was one thing but this was different. He wasn't being blocked by Tommy, his son was _gone_. He wasn’t answering phone calls or texts. They hadn’t even been arguing. Tommy would never let his father worry needlessly like this. 

He'd invited all of the Science Team to Dunkin’ Donuts to ask if they’d seen his son, but no one had. The group looked at Tommy’s curly-cue handwriting on the note that G-Man had set on the table with an unreadable air. The man had a very stoic face, but it didn’t take being a father for Gordon to sense the fear and heartbreak underneath. G-man’s fingers idly smoothed down the crease where Tommy had folded the paper.

_ ‘Hey, dad! I had to pop out for an errand. When you wake up, can you feed Sunkist for me? Love you!’ _

It was written in cheerful yellow gel pen. Sunkist whined and pawed the ground where she sat at Mr. Coolatta’s side. She barked out a flurry of bright red Sweet Voice when he lay a hand on the top of her head. It was like Tommy had vanished off the face of the earth. She'd been restless since he'd found her that first morning. 

“That is very unlike our Tommy!” Dr. Coomer stated with the same loud, happy tone as usual. Gordon couldn’t hold it against him- it was just how he talked. “If he was planning on going on a trip, he would have told someone!”

“I wonder what the ‘errand’ was,” Bubby said, using his fingers to make air quotes and then immediately crossing his arms again. His leather jacket squeaked as he shoved his balled fists into his armpits. “Vague, much?”

Gordon tapped his fingers nervously on the table, eyes locked on the note. There was nothing strange about it and somehow it was even more off-putting that way. “Maybe there’s something wrong with your phone, Mr. Coolatta?” he suggested, abruptly reaching for his bag, “Something probably came up and he just couldn’t reach you. Let us try.”

Dr. Coomer and Bubby reached for their own phones. There were several clicks as the three men typed out hasty messages to their friend.

_ HELLO, TOMMY! YOUR FATHER IS VERY WORRIED ABOUT YOU. WHERE ARE YOU?_

ERROR.

_ Hey man, are you doing alright? No one’s heard from you for a while. Text me -Gordon’_

ERROR.

_ tommy your dad is losing his fucking mind please call him back before he twists space-time into a pretzel_

ERROR.

The red ‘Not Delivered' message mocked each of them. The texts had bounced immediately. G-Man’s face seemed to get even more impassive as his coffee froze in his grip. The sound of ice crackling echoed through the room. The sounds of the other patrons were muffled like they were a million miles away.

“Thank you all for your time, doctors... Coomer, Bubby, Freeman… I will be looking for my ssson, so please, let me know if he contacts you.”

“Please, Mr. Coolatta!” Coomer said, reaching for the note to see it again. “Let us assist you. Tommy is our friend and we'd like to find him!”  
  
G-Man snatched it away before the old man could touch it. “There isss, no need. I have a, uh, bad feeling about all this… It would be better if you all ssstayed away for now.”

The man and dog vanished before any of the Science Team could protest.

* * *

Coomer went missing next. He’d been calling each of the Science Team every day since they’d gotten black from Back Mesa, first thing in the morning. If they didn’t pick up, which they often didn’t since he was a very early riser, he’d leave them a cheerful message to wake up to. It was a reassuring piece of predictability that they all appreciated. Albeit, not when the phone was ringing at ass o'clock in the morning. 

One day, neither of the remaining members woke up to a ‘HELLO, GORDON!’ or a ‘GOOD MORNING, PROFESSOR BUBBY!’ on their answering machines. The ice cold feeling from the Dunkin’ Donuts returned. Gordon tried to push it aside to make breakfast, but was interrupted less than fifteen minutes later. Bubby showed up on Gordon’s front stoop and almost started a fight when he wasn’t allowed in. 

“I don’t care about the fucking boxes in your hallway, Gordon! First Tommy and now Coomer? This is bullshit!”

Gordon stepped out of his front door, forcing Bubby back a few paces, and shut it tight behind him. He hushed him quickly. “Not so loud! I have neighbours, you know? Are you sure he’s gone and that he didn’t just, like, punch his landline into oblivion?”

“I went to his house, shithead! It’s only you that has the weird visiting embargo. He’s just gone.”

Gordon bit his lip. What if they hadn’t wiped out the entire United States Military? Was the HECU still hellbent on covering up the incident at Black Mesa? They’d all already accepted their hush money. It wasn’t like any of them were chomping at the bit to talk about their trauma. Possibilities spun in his head. 

“Was there any sign of forced entry?”

“No! Everything was locked up when I got there. I have his spare key, so I checked in to make sure he didn’t fall down or something. He’s. Just. Gone.”

Gordon slumped back against his door. “What do we do now?”

A fog seemed to settle over everything, greying out an already dull-colored morning. Gordon’s guts twisted in his stomach like the tentacles on a Bullsquid’s face. They both tried to call Coomer’s phone, but calls and texts both bounced. Bubby grabbed Gordon’s forearm and all but dragged him back to Dr. Coomer’s place. Gordon barely had the time to get his shoes on. 

They found nothing. No note, no struggle, nothing. Gordon stared unseeingly at the picture pinned on Coomer’s fridge: the group shot they’d taken at Black Mesa. His own copy was shoved into his wallet. Bubby paced up and down the hallway, teeth grit tightly. He looked like he was about to set a fire or rip out of his own skin.

“Coomer! If this is a prank, I’m going to kill you!” he snapped. There was no answer from the empty house. Bubby marched over to the window and threw it open, shouting into the backyard. “You hear me?!”

“Bubby,” Gordon interrupted, “Let’s… Let’s go down to the police station and file a missing person’s report. After that, maybe we can… I dunno, make flyers. Go canvas the streets.”

Bubby clenched and unclenched his fists. After a moment, he slammed the window shut again and locked it. “Yeah. Let’s do that. Better than nothing, I guess.”

They searched all day, but no one had seen Coomer. Bubby was still accosting people on the street when Gordon claimed he had to go home to feed Josh- the sun had already set and the streetlights were blinking on. 

“Call me if anything changes, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah. Go back home to your kid, Freeman.”

* * *

Dr. Feelgood blared out of Gordon’s shitty, outdated iPhone at top volume. At least, it was supposed to be Dr. Feelgood. Instead, it was more like rhythmic static. Gordon threw out his hand to stop the noise and knocked his alarm clock onto the floor with a shattering of glass.

“Fuck!” he snarled, voice thick with sleep, as he pulled himself upwards and hit the answer button. His heart pounded against his ribs as he held the phone up to his ear. He groped for the bedside lamp next. He narrowly avoided pushing that to the floor too. The room filled with greasy yellow light.

“Hello?” he asked, eyes shut tight against the lamplight. He snorted and cleared his throat. 

“Go...r… I found… Coo… Tommy… You have to…”

“Bubby, is that you?”

“Gor...d… Don’t-”

“I can’t hear you, man, you’re breaking up. Can you call me back?”

“No! You have… to st… Si… ent…”

“What?”

“Sil… ill! To… Benry…”

“Benry? Bubby, what’s going on?!”

The call dropped. Gordon cursed and hopped out of bed, barely noticing when he cut the soles of his feet. His chest felt like it was caught in a vice grip. Benry. Bubby had said something about Benry. His stomach sank and seethed. His anger simmered like acid, so easily called upon. 

He should have known it had something to do with that fucker. He couldn’t just leave them alone, could he?

He threw on the first set of clean clothes that his hands touched- a Caustic t-shirt, orange hoodie, and jeans. He forced a brush through his hair as fast as he could. He briefly, begrudgingly, wished for his HEV suit. He’d pretty much torn it to shreds with the help of the Science Team after Tommy’s birthday party. He’d taken his crowbar to the latches of his suit when some gunk had sealed them shut and broken them, trapping himself. He hadn't been thinking straight. 

Bubby had heated the metal while Tommy kept Gordon calm, weakening the suit until Dr. Coomer could rip it open like a tin can. Gordon had been sobbing when they’d finally pulled him out and got him into a shower. The metal had screamed. 

He hated it, but at least he would have been safe. If he had to fight Benry again… He clenched his right hand. He didn’t even have a gun anymore. He rotated his fist and his scars caught the light. He turned away from his thoughts and headed for the door. He'd figure something out. 

He snatched his keys off the table, put on his shoes and jacket, and left the house without another word. 

Bubby’s apartment door was standing open when Gordon got there. There wasn’t any note. His shoes were missing from the shoe rack. Gordon checked the closet for his leather jacket and that was gone too. He cursed under his breath and started to look for a weapon. Bubby had to have something, right?

Dr. Feelgood blared from his phone, followed by a ‘HELLO, GORDON’, then the Kazoo Kid song (remix). The three blurred together into a terrible, static-ridden mess. Gordon almost dropped his phone in his haste to punch in his lock code. 

Three text messages blinked up at him calmly. Tommy, Coomer, and Bubby. They’d messaged him all at once. He hesitantly opened the messages. 

_Mr Freeman, you have to help us! Its Benry again :( come to Silent Hill _

_ HELLO GORDON! IT LOOKS LIKE WE’RE IN A BIT OF A PICKLE. CAN YOU COME HELP US? WE’RE AT SILENT HILL _

_ hey asshole, are you going to make us fight this skeleton fucker all alone? meet us in silent hill _

His head pounded with lack of sleep and worry. He could feel the pressure growing behind his eyes when he pinched the bridge of his nose. He tried to center himself. At least he had a lead now. Every step felt like a battle as something in him screamed, so he pushed through it by moving faster.

He locked Bubby’s apartment on the way out and skipped the elevator in favor of the stairs. If he stood still right now he would burst. He took them two at a time as he descended and leaped over the last few steps completely, shooting out of the apartment building’s side door. He just barely kept from running to his car. 

He slammed the door shut behind him and took a moment to breathe. He grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and gripped it until his knuckles were white. He tried to anchor himself against the dread that washed over him in waves. Breathe in. One, two, three, four, five… He breathed out through his nose. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven...

He could do this. 

“Siri, give me directions to Silent Hill.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: abduction/missing person(s), unreality, mindfuckery/manipulation, mention of past panic attack
> 
> HLVRAI workskin found here: https://thedevotress.tumblr.com/post/628408989141581824/i-just-got-reminded-of-my-hlvrai-workskin-so
> 
> I hope you're in for a wild ride! Feel free to speculate in the comments, it fuels the writing machine.


	2. Roadtrip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting to Silent Hill is a task in and of itself. 
> 
> (tws in endnote)

The Science Team had told him that they were in Silent Hill. They hadn’t said anything about Silent Hill being in _fucking Maine_. He was in New Mexico. Gordon stared down in disbelief at the estimated travel time by car. 

“Thirty six hours?! Jesus Christ, guys, you couldn’t have decided to have round two a little closer to home?” Gordon complained, tossing his phone into the passenger seat. 

He turned his key in the ignition and threw his car into reverse. If he was going to be driving thirty six hours, he couldn’t just peel out of the parking lot and go to Silent Hill. He’d need to pack a bag, at least, and maybe eat breakfast first. He refused to spend days and days in the same outfit again like he had in Black Mesa. That had been disgusting. No thank you. 

Come to think of it, maybe he’d pick up some wet wipes and dry shampoo too. If he was entering another hellhole, he wasn’t going to go in blind and unprepared. 

His momentary annoyance faded back into the same stomach-sick feeling from earlier as he pulled up to the driveway. The street was drained of color in the early morning atmosphere. The lightless pits of his windows gazed out with an accusatory tone. He felt guilt rise in his gullet, like stalling for even a moment was paramount to betrayal. His friends could be hurt or dying right now and he’d never make it in time if he didn’t leave right now. Right now. 

His hand hovered over the gearshift, ready to turn out of his driveway and speed towards Silent Hill, before a car horn blared in his ear.

“HEY, BUDDY! LET’S FUCKING GO, HUH?!”

Gordon jumped in his seat and slammed the top of his head against his car’s roof. Fuck! When you were as big a guy as he was, sometimes the world felt like it wasn’t made for him. He clutched his aching skull, groaning. The man laid on the horn again.

“IN OR OUT, IDIOT! PICK A SIDE!”

Gordon gave him a brief wave and what he hoped was a rueful smile (he mostly just looked constipated). “Sorry!” he called back and got the bird for his efforts. 

What was he thinking? He can’t help anyone if he got T-boned before making it to Silent Hill. Here he was, paused halfway in his driveway and blocking traffic. He was lucky the other guy had been able to see him in the fog.. He pulled into the drive the rest of the way and leaned his forehead against the cool faux-leather of his steering wheel. Fuck. He needed to get his head on straight. 

Food. Overnight bag. Shower. Then he would go.

He took a deep breath and opened his car door, every movement heavy with tiredness as he made his way inside. He stomped the dirt off his shoes half-heartedly and shouldered open his front door. He turned the entry hall lights on, but the house remained gloomy.

Gordon went to his kitchen and opened his cupboard. Inside was a variety of ramen and not much else. He sighed out of his nose and pulled one down at random. Better than nothing, right? He gave his kettle a quick sniff. It smelt a little like mildew, but if he boiled more water in there it would be fine. He gave it a quick rinse and then set it on the stove.

He looked in his fridge for something to snack on while he waited for the water to boil, but couldn’t find much more than a few slices of lunch meat to roll up. Good enough. He sat down at the table and pulled out his phone.

He had directions but he didn’t know anything else about Silent Hill. He should probably look up the town a bit more. The others probably hadn’t, except for maybe Tommy. He erased ‘directions to’ from his search bar and replaced them with ‘wikipedia’. He paused. Didn’t they destroy wikipedia?

Thankfully, it appeared that Black Mesa either had backup servers or had replaced the ones they’d destroyed. The site was there when he clicked on the link- an orange banner was stretched across the screen asking for donations. Maybe later. 

Silent Hill was formerly a coal-mining down and currently a kitschy little tourist trap. They had an amusement park, a lake, and a ‘rich history’. Whatever that meant. The pictures didn’t look so bad, although nothing really appealed to him since he wasn’t a kid anymore. The trams at Black Mesa had pretty much ruined his opinion on roller coasters anyway.

If Benry had abducted all his friends just to make them go to an amusement park with him, Gordon was going to be pissed. He’d have to do a better job defeating him this time. This was getting ridiculous. 

The whistle of the kettle broke Gordon out of his thoughts. He went to fix his meager breakfast while his mind tumbled over the past few weeks. How had Benry survived anyway? They’d destroyed all his passports, Gordon alone must have sunk a hundred bullets into him, and they’d left him for dead in Black Mesa. Gordon tapped his fingers against the counter and glared at his ramen like it would make it cook faster.

There had to be something he was missing. Maybe he could ask Mr. Coolatta- _oh, Mr. Coolatta!_

How on earth could Gordon have forgotten? He and the others had promised that if they found out anything about Tommy they’d tell him. Tommy had texted Gordon. He could tell Mr. Coolatta that his son was safe, at least. Maybe he’d even offer to come with Gordon to Silent Hill as back up. Gordon moved his ramen cup over to the table quickly.

“Hot, hot, hot,” he hissed under his breath, shaking out his singed fingers. He reached for his phone again and swiped through his passcode. The screen went black. “Huh, no battery? What the hell?! I just got up!”

He huffed and set his phone down roughly. He’d eat first and then go dig out his charger. Bullshit.

He didn’t burn his tongue on his ramen, at least. He threw his fork in the sink and his trash in the bin before stretching. Next was his phone charger. Thankfully, it was right where he left it on his bedside table beside his lamp and a gift Tommy had bought for Joshua's upcoming birthday. He looked down at it with guilty eyes. He hoped Tommy was okay. He plugged in his phone and made sure it was charging this time. Stupid cheap cord. He grabbed a towel and headed into the bathroom.

After his time at Black Mesa, he’d come to appreciate bathing more. If he ever moved out, he’d want to get a place with a real bathtub. Maybe one of the ones with clawed feet. He deserved it after what he’d gone through. He grabbed his toothbrush and took it into the shower with him. Two birds, one stone.

As much as he wanted to relax, he still felt anxious. Benry hadn’t been too much of a threat, in the end, but what if he’d collaborated with those boot boys again? Gordon clenched his fists in his wet hair. No. Let’s not go there. It already felt like he was being watched. He hurried to finish washing up.

He threw back on the same hoodie, t-shirt, and jeans. He’d only worn them for an hour; what was he, made of laundry money? 

Speaking of clothing, he wondered how big of a bag he should bring. He had no clue how long he’d been in Black Mesa since Dr. Coomer’s timekeeping was suspect at best and Gordon had lost a lot of blood. If Silent Hill was the same, it could be anywhere from days to weeks. The thought made his skin crawl. 

He couldn’t believe he was walking right back into this. It’s not like he had a choice though.

Gordon packed a few days worth of clothing, his tooth and hair brushes, and his charger. His phone was full when he checked it again. Should he pack snacks? He didn’t want to live on soda ever again, no matter what Tommy said. He’d have to stop at the store if he wanted anything good though. 

Then there was the question of weapons… He didn’t have his gun anymore and all he had in the house were shitty kitchen knives. He supposed he could stop at a hardware store on his way to Maine. Fuck, this was going to be expensive. Thank God for hush money. What else? 

It was on the tip of his tongue. 

…

Oh well. Must have been a lie.

Gordon shouldered his bag, grabbed his phone, and headed out to his car. Road trip time. 

* * *

The drive was as boring as it was long. ‘Extremely’ on both fronts. 

Gordon was amazed that he hadn’t fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed into a tree by now. No amount of radio or podcasts could spice up the pure monotony of the grey world around his car. Every town he passed through was utterly uninteresting to him. Every landscape seemed dull and generic. He’d thought that once he got out of Black Mesa alive, he’d appreciate nature more. It's not like he wasn't trying. 

Once you’ve seen one field, one forest, one desert you’ve seen them all. Maybe he just wasn’t the outdoorsy type. 

Time slowed to a molasses-like crawl and sped up in terrible, unpredictable intervals. One moment his phone’s clock told him it was 3pm for what felt like fifty minutes, on a stretch of pothole-ridden road, and the next it was telling him it was 7pm. Gordon’s surprise was smothered by his boredom. It was better not to remember the long nothing hours of driving, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like he was tired and micro-sleeping yet. 

Not that zoning out was more comfortable. He kept getting dragged away by his thoughts and leaving his body on autopilot. Images would pop into his mind, unbidden. His heart skipped if he focused too hard on what might be happening to his friends, so he tried to push them back down again. It worked about as well as trying to shove a beach ball under the water. Gordon changed his grip on the steering wheel and sighed. 

He’d looked up meditation techniques after Black Mesa- it had seemed easier than therapy. They’d advised him to imagine his thoughts flowing by like a river by, but not engage with them. He tried to loosen his control and be ‘mindful’, whatever that was, but he could feel his brain start to spiral. It was like sitting centimeters away from a spring-swelled torrent of all the worries he was avoiding. He needed a distraction. 

He focused on his phone again. It was still 7pm. The sun was starting to set. The arrow that represented his car blinked as it made its slow and steady journey. He’d turned off the radio at some point: it had been getting more and more staticky no matter how much he’d tuned it. 

His skin itched from the inside out when he considered all the hours between himself and Silent Hill. He toyed with the idea of pressing a little harder on the gas. 

His stomach sank like a cold, cold stone when he thought of the diminishing hours between himself and Silent Hill too. He couldn’t turn back now. Just how like, on the day of the test at Black Mesa, he couldn’t have just turned over and gone back to sleep. ‘

It was inevitable.

Gordon jerked back to awareness. The clock said 1am. He stood on the breaks when he felt a rush of exhaustion pour over him. Thankfully there was no one behind him, on this black stretch of road in the middle of nowhere. He blinked hard as if that would make his phone say something else. His mouth felt like gummy sandpaper. 

He was losing too much time. It couldn’t be safe to zone out like this. He slowly let off the break and pulled over to the side of the road. Dammit. He pushed his hands up under his glasses and pressed the heel of his palms against his eyes. Keep it together, Gordon. He took a few deep breaths. Not that it calmed him down, but at least it meant he was still alive. 

His ears perked up at the soft murmur of a plastic bag moving in the air of his A/C. He peered through his fingers towards the passenger seat like whatever was in it would bite him. It was a bag from some 24/7 drug store. He resettled his glasses on his face and pulled it into his lap.

Snacks, a bottle of water, wet wipes, dry shampoo, and a mini First AID kit. He didn’t remember buying this. He pushed it back into the passenger seat.

“I need some sleep. Rest for Gordon,” he murmured before pinching himself. He had to stop doing that, it made him sound crazy. It was one thing to refer to himself in the third person in the heat of the moment in the middle of an alien invasion, but he couldn’t let it become a habit. The team's weirdness was infecting him. 

He checked his phone again. Still 1am. His GPS said he was only a stone’s throw from Silent Hill. A few hours, at most. He’d be there by dawn. His heart banged against his sternum as if connected to some invisible rope, yanked towards Silent Hill. He’d call it a leap, but that would denote some kind of excitement. All he felt was dread.

He should keep driving. There had to be a hotel in Silent Hill he could stay at, then he could find his friends. He reached for the keys and paused. No. No, that felt wrong. If Benry was there… did he really want to sleep with no one on guard? 

(you didn’t sleep in Silent Hill)

He’d stop at a motel and finish his journey in the morning. He’d already made record time, his friends could fend for themselves for a few hours more. He didn’t think any of them could actually die anyways. He steadfastly swallowed passed the lump in his throat. 

He turned the key and started driving again. There had to be a Super 8 around here somewhere. He kept getting turned around and ending up back on the highway, but eventually he found something that looked suitable. He parked out front and headed inside, the bored-looking man behind the counter barely speaking to him as they exchanged keys for money. He looked even worse than Gordon felt.

The motel room looked exactly the same as every other motel room. A place so nondescript, so generic, that if Gordon blinked and the threadbare carpet changed color he might not even notice. It was boring, bordering on non-existant. 

Gordon shrugged his backpack off his shoulders and set it on the desk. It was some type of cheap material with fake wood grain. It almost reminded him of the desks back in elementary school. He took the chance to repack his bag with the things he’d bought at the drugstore.

He debated taking a shower, now that he had a plastic bag for his dirty laundry. He eyed the bathtub wearily. It looked clean enough… Maybe just a fast one. He reminded himself to pull the bed away from the wall and check for bed bugs before he sat on anything plush. 

The water had only come out cold, no matter how much he fiddled with it. He’d grumbled about it but cleaned himself anyway- even a quick rinse was better than nothing. The tiles had this maddening curly-cue pattern that Gordon stared at the entire time, trying to find where it repeated.

The room was clean and bug-free on closer inspection, if a little worn and cheap. Gordon could live with that. As long as there were no visible stains, he didn’t feel the need to break out a UV light. The comforter was a blue-green paisley that matched the curtains. He fell into bed and was asleep before his head hit the pillow. 

He slept restlessly and dreamed of nothing at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tws: unreality, mindfuckery/manipulation, loss of time, memory problems, unsanitary (brief- he just uses a mildew-smelling kettle and mentions checking a hotel room for bugs)
> 
> "I forgot what I was saying, must have been a lie" is something my dad always said.
> 
> I promise we'll be in Silent Hill next time! It just felt weird to handwave the entire journey.


	3. Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon makes it to Silent Hill (a chapter late) and finds it 'empty'.
> 
> (tws in endnote)

The day dawned bright and gloomy. The fog was rolling in over the distant Toluca Lake. 

Gordon was awake to watch the sun try to rise in the mist-choked sky. He had been awake since 5am, much against his will. That same chain-yank-tug in his chest from before had grown too great to let him rest. He’d been wrenched from sleep and couldn’t return to it despite his comfortable motel bed and quiet, dark room. Whatever force wanted him in Silent Hill had grown impatient waiting for him to arrive. 

Gordon shook his head, trying to rid himself of such thoughts. He didn’t need to be ominous about it. It was Benry that wanted the team in Silent Hill. As much as he hated Benry, he didn’t think the former security guard could kill any of them in a way that mattered. They'd be fine. They'd beaten him once.

His left hand tightened on the steering wheel and the other reached up to rub his sternum. His reassurances couldn’t make the tight, aching ball of anxiety release from his chest no matter how much he repeated them. If he concentrated on it, though, he could almost pretend the twisting in his viscera was anger. Gordon focussed on that thought instead. He was mad, not scared. Fuck Benry. 

He couldn’t believe that gamer fuckwit was getting his goat and he wasn’t ever here. 

Maybe he just needed fresh air. He rolled down his window and was hit by the cold scent of lakewater. That would be Toluca, he supposed. It was refreshing but something about it churned his stomach. Was that mildew? Or pond scum? Ghostly fingers of fog scratched against his windshield and over the cracked pavement before him. His headlights could only illuminate so much. Anything could lurch out in front of him.

He slowed down his car. The last thing he needed was to hit a deer or something. 

A dark shape emerged in front of him on the side of the nameless road. Gordon clenched his fists on the steering wheel, heart leaping into his throat, until the geometric shape resolved into the outline of a building. A little closer and a sign out front declared it to be ‘Deisaco Fir Tree Filling Station’. Fuck, he was jumpy. A building had just snuck up on him. A stationary fucking object. Damn this fog, he needed to get a hold of himself. 

Gordon glanced at his gas tank indicator. He wasn’t running on fumes, but he could use some fuel.

He turned onto the overgrown parking lot a bit too eagerly and went over the curb with a loud thump. Shit, he better not have broken anything. He unbuckled his seat belt and stuck his head out the window to see better on his way to the pumps. He barely avoided the gaping potholes where dry, almost colorless grass grew in sickly bunches. Was this place even still operational?

He stopped in front of one of the pumps and hopped out. The early morning chill soaked through his thin hoodie like nothing. He shivered as gooseflesh rose on his arms, making the hair on the nape of his neck stand up. He should have thrown on a jacket too. He opened his tank and inserted the nozzle. The gas came out just fine when he pulled the trigger, so this place couldn’t have been abandoned for too long, right? 

The road was dead quiet except for the faraway sound of dripping. It was probably dew or morning rain off the trees. There was a distant sort of non-sound, an inaudible rush, the sound where there was nothing else. The blood in Gordon’s ears, perhaps. Gordon removed the nozzle with a soft click and approached the building.

It was definitely defunct; most of the windows had been smashed out and the door was just barely hanging on. Just Gordon’s luck. He’d wanted to ask if anyone had seen anyone strange around here. On the door of the building was a notice in a plastic sleeve, protected from the elements but still yellowed and curled at the corners. Gordon pulled it down to read it.

It was an evacuation notice. There had been some sort of underground fire and there were sinkholes opening up or something. The entire town had been abandoned. Just fucking great. Maybe destroying that server room had rolled back Wikipedia’s edits since it hadn’t said anything about _this_. Now Gordon knew why it wasn’t considered a reliable source.

So, the only people in this entire town would be his friends and Benry. Gordon knew it couldn’t be that easy. Benry had probably filled the town with more aliens from Xen. It would be like finding hay in a needle stack.

At least the gas was free. On the way out he should fill up a few gas cans and save himself some money. He returned to his car quickly, arms folded against the cold.

He didn’t get far though. A concrete barricade was thrown up in the middle of the road, impeding his progress by car. The trees on either side of the road were clustered too thickly for him to drive around. He grit his teeth and laid on the horn in frustration.

“God fucking dammit!”

He guessed he’d just have to _walk_ to Silent Hill. 

He parked his car at the barricade, shouldered his backpack, and started to climb over the roadblock. It wasn’t the most physically taxing thing he’d ever done, but he still stumbled over the other side. He cursed under his breath. This was not a good way to start his day.

Gordon walked quickly down the road, folding his arms over his chest again to keep warm. The trees pressing in from either side along with the isolation of an abandoned town made him feel both agoraphobic and claustrophobic. There was too much and too little space around him. He strained his ears as he carefully avoided twisting his ankle in a pothole.

It was still dead quiet. Somehow, it wasn’t comforting.

The cold smell of water and chlorophyll clawed through his nose and filled his lungs. He couldn’t stop himself from imagining it as something real. Physical. Like he was choking down the fog itself. At least he couldn’t smell the coal fire that everyone had been running from. He sped up to a light jog. The sooner he got to town, the sooner he could leave. 

Was that the echo of his own footsteps, or was someone following him? He slowed down and heard nothing, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe Benry was watching him right now. Always dogging his heels and asking for a passport. Gordon had made sure to get one after the incident at Black Mesa. Purely for practical reasons, of course.

Was that a growl? Gordon sped up to a full run. If Benry had summoned aliens here, he didn’t want to fight them where he could be attacked from either side. The idea of a headcrab jumping at him from the trees… 

The road terminated suddenly in front of him. If he’d been paying less attention, he might have ran right over the edge and into the pit below. As it was he was able to skid to a stop- sending himself right on his ass in the process. He hissed in pain. He was getting too old for this. 

Gordon got to his feet, brushing the dirt off the back of his jeans and hoodie. He cautiously approached the chasm- sidling up to it, like he was ready to throw himself backwards at any moment. He peered over the edge and let out a low whistle. He couldn’t even see the bottom. A memory of Tommy saying ‘ _we’re trying to dig to the center of the earth!_ ’ popped up, unbidden.

Tommy. Gordon’s stomach twisted.

He’d jumped larger holes in Black Mesa, but something about this one disturbed him. He looked around for another way. There, just off to the side of the road, was an overgrown footpath. 

Gordon wanted to go into the trees even less, but… He didn’t really have a choice, did he? He took a deep breath and stepped onto the trail. 

* * *

The trail let out onto a little residential street. A row of townhouses were laid out in front of Gordon, all charming red brick and white shutter under a layer of grime and moss. The windows here were smashed as well, but not as completely as the gas station. If he let his eyes go hazy, with all this fog, it almost looked like a normal street anywhere in America. He could almost imagine someone coming out to grab their newspaper or a group of children walking passed on their way to school.

Children. Joshua. He wondered how Joshua was getting along without him. Again.

He was such a bad father.

The houses were mostly all the same but there were hints of individuality here and there. There were overgrown flower boxes in windows, rusted out bicycles left on lawns, and broken down cars in driveways. His team could be hiding out anywhere in this town. They could be holed up in any of these houses, in fact.

And so could Benry.

Gordon crossed the street to the houses, instinctively glancing both ways beforehand, and marched up to one of the doors. He only felt a little awkward when he tried to turn the handle to a complete stranger’s house. It rattled but didn’t open. Locked. 

“Hello?!” he called, his voice carrying down the street, “Bubby? Dr. Coomer? Tommy?!”

His heart pounded in his chest as he waited for an answer. There was nothing but silence. It was fitting, he guessed, with the name of the town. He tried to call out again but the words died in his throat. It felt unspeakably dangerous to draw attention to himself for some reason.

‘ _Instinct!_ ’ He thought, remembering what Tommy said again. 

Better to be quiet. He walked through people’s yards as he went down the row of houses and tried to open the doors. He hoped he didn’t have to go through the entire town like this. He felt like the world’s stupidest trick or treater. 

He sat down on the stoop of one of the houses and pulled out his phone. Maybe he could text one of his friends and they could tell him where they were. The keyboard clicked away as he tried to message Tommy. Not delivered; there was no reception. He didn’t know why he didn’t expect that.

It wasn’t silent anymore. He froze, trying to strain his ears again.

There was a low, almost musical thrum coming from further down the street. 

He carefully stood up again and tucked his phone away. Maybe it was nothing, but if he was Benry… Maybe he could catch him off guard and save them all some trouble. He pulled his hood on over his hair and crouched in the tall grass, creeping towards the sound.

There was something blue glowing through the mist, bobbing like boats on top of water. Orbs that gave off a barely audible hum of their own. There would have been clearer notes sung when they were created, but he'd missed them. Gordon would recognize Sweet Voice anywhere. Benry must have just been here. 

They were fading-! Gordon hurried after them while keeping low to the ground. He needed to find a weapon before confronting Benry. He didn’t even have a crowbar on him. The blue orbs drew away from him. They weren’t disappearing, but floating away. Was he being lured somewhere? Fuck. Was it a trap?

It’s not like he had any other leads. He sped up before his game of fourth dimensional chess with himself cost him his trail. He finally stood up to run after the lights. Damn being subtle!

And almost fell into another pit for his trouble. “FUCK!” he screamed, throwing himself back and scraping up his hands. “You’re such a DICK, Benry! Get back here!”

There was no answer but the lights were still floating over the pit and to the left. There was another working street he could see, just barely, through the fog. He scrambled to his feet and took off running. He’d double back, go around, and try to ambush Benry. Wouldn’t that be a novel change of pace?

He turned off Midwich Street onto Matheson and then immediately down the first serviceable footpath he saw. The lights were just passing him by when he was let out onto Blotch. Gordon’s boots slapped heavily against the pavement, each step echoing like a gunshot. He jumped over a missing slab of sidewalk.

“What kind of a fucking street name is ‘Blotch’?!” he shouted, half hysterical as he almost ran into the street sign. The lights turned left back onto Matheson and Gordon growled under his breath. He passed by some decrepit, rotting shops in his blind pursuit. He could look for a weapon later. If he caught Benry now, he’d just beat him to death with his own hands.

He’d probably say that touching him was gay or something. Prick. 

Gordon was faster out of the HEV suit, but he was more out of breath when he finally saw the lights fading into the doorway of somewhere called ‘Happy Burger’. It looked like it had been a dive even when the town was populated. Figures that Benry would want to meet up in the Silent Hill equivalent to Denny’s. 

Gordon walked into the restaurant, breathing heavily. Once again, something told him to be quiet, so he was. It was nice to look around without being blinded by fog for once. The restaurant had only booths, no tables, and the floor was littered with fallen ceiling tiles. It smelt like mold. Gordon scrunched his nose. He hoped it was benign mold.

He didn’t notice the blood on the floor until he stepped in it. It was bright red- so red it almost looked fake- but the heavy smell of iron said it was anything but. Gordon leaped back and his shoe made a smooching sound as it was pulled free. The blood was tacky.

Fresh.

Gordon’s mouth filled with spit- the prelude to vomit- as another scent hit him. Fresh rot. How had he missed it before? He knew it well. He thought he’d never have to smell it again. His eyes hesitantly traced the blood back to its source.

A man lay face down in the gore, one hand stretched above his head and clutching a key. 

Just because an evacuation was ordered didn’t mean everyone had left. People didn’t want to abandon their homes. There might have still been one or two people hanging around, making their lives in this decaying place. Maybe even a few homeless people coming to live here because it was abandoned specifically.

Had Benry really just killed one of them just to leave Gordon this taunting message? 

Gordon swallowed, and swallowed, and swallowed. He couldn’t vomit. Not right now. Not with Benry maybe in the next room. He pulled his T-shirt over his nose and crouched. He reached out with shaking fingers for the key. His fingers brushed over ice-cold corpse flesh before wrapping around the ice-cold metal instead. He recoiled like he’d been burned. 

He straightened up and crossed the dining room with as few strides as possible. He held his breath until he’d hopped the counter. He could see the lights beyond the doorway of what must have, at one point, been the manager’s office. He told himself it was rage that was flitting about in the birdcage of his chest. 

Rage. Rage. _Rage_.

“Benry!”

It wasn’t Benry.

It wasn’t even Sweet Voice. 

Sweet Voice didn’t move from where it was placed. Sweet Voice didn’t make a sound after it was sung into existence. Sweet Voice cocooned around corpses-

But it didn’t eat them. 

The blue orbs clustered inside the ripped-open chest of another dead man. They made a nest between the sinew of his ribs as he lay slumped over the manager’s desk. The corpse was so drenched in blood that Gordon couldn’t hope to know what race it’d been or what age. The smell of blood was a physical presence with a fist around his throat. The hum was muffled by the louder sound of chewing. 

At this distance, without the fog, he could see into the orbs. Benry’s voice had been transparent around the edges, but largely opaque. The Sweet Voice looked almost like bubbles of tie dye. This was more like the light a firefly gave off. A particularly bright firefly.

The insects inside the light were easily the size of Gordon’s open hand from wrist to fingertip. They had the desiccated look of black skin vacuum-sealed around bone that some Xen wildlife had, except for around the head. What looked like stained bandages at first were, on closer inspection, very thin strips of leathery human skin. Gordon was reminded of wrapping raw bacon around chicken breasts for dinner and gagged.

The humming grew louder and chewing stopped as the insects took flight. They’d noticed him.

Gordon took a hesitant step back, struck speechless. In his head he could hear the sound of Peeper Puppies charging their seismic attack, or the garbled language of the ‘ex-wives’, or the distant roar of a Bullsquid, or-

The wasps charged at him, swooping down in an arch, and stabbed at him with their stingers. He fell backwards against the wall with a breathless cry. Two of the three misjudged their trajectory and had to pull back. The third struck true.

Gordon shrieked as the stinger sunk into the meat of his neck, bulging just under the skin. It burned much worse than a usual insect sting. He was reminded of stepping on a nail as a child, every inch of the rusty metal scraping inside his veins. The tetanus shots that had come after hadn't been pleasant either. The wasp’s natural hum rattled through his bones like an EDM concert. This couldn’t be happening. 

The abdomen was all wrong. The thought struck him and he couldn’t let it go. It wasn’t the solid shape of a real wasp: it looked like a deflated balloon or a drained blister. It was all hollow, semi-transparent thick skin. Gordon blinked dumbly at it, trying to comprehend, as some vacuum in the wasp started to pull.

He watched his blood start to gush into the empty space and swiped his hand down instinctively, knocking the insect to the ground. The stinger-syringe pulled out with a sickening draining feeling. He stomped blindly but had no idea if he crushed it or not. His hand slapped over the wound to staunch the gushing blood. 

“Jesus FUCK! What are you?!” he screamed, spinning away from the other insects approaching. He stumbled out of the open door and back into the dining room. It had been a mistake to follow the lights without a weapon. It had been a mistake to come here at all. 

Gordon threw himself bodily out of the Happy Burger and landed hard on his knees outside. He crawled a few paces- over-balanced forward- as he got back on his feet. All around him, the humming of the wasps was reaching a fever pitch. It was like someone had flipped a switch. The pinpricks of blue glow were floating all around the street, just beyond the mist where Gordon couldn’t make out their details, and they were getting closer.

Gordon rushed across the street to an Ice Cream shoppe. Locked.

A drug store. Locked.

Someplace called ‘GHOUL’. Locked.

The streets got darker as some evil closed in around him. 

In the distance, an old air raid siren began to scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tws: insects, needles, blood/gore, injury, corpses, paranoia, unsanitary (mold), emetophobia (mentioned), PTSD (implied) 
> 
> Gordon meets his first monster: the Will o' Wasps. Please, feel free to speculate wildly about what facet of his fucked up mentality they represent (although you don't have all the clues yet)
> 
> Don't touch that dial now! The fun's just started.
> 
> (please leave comments. comments fuel the writing machine)


	4. null

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and now for something completely different
> 
> (tws in endnote)

An alarm clock screamed from the other room and startled Benry awake. 

“Huh?” he muttered, reaching up to wipe the sleep from his eyes. Where the hell was he? He ran short fingernails through his hair. His helmet was gone. Damn, he liked that helmet. It would be a pain to get a new one now that Black Mesa was gone.

Black Mesa. That’s right, he’d lost the final battle. Big Boss Benry getting destroyed by the angry protag and his plucky party of adventurers. It was the fate of all raid bosses. Perfectly respectable. It had been pretty fun.

Okay, not ‘fun’ per se. He didn’t like being mean and he didn’t like getting hurt. Benry enjoyed video games better when he was the one with the controller. Next time, Coomer could take the final boss fight. 

So the last thing he remembered was getting his socks rocked by Gordon, but where was he now?

He dragged himself upright. A blue-green paisley comforter pooled around his waist as he looked around, squinting. He was in an apartment. He was in the living room, on the couch, directly across from the TV and a storage chest. Whoever lived here had a PS4. Fuckin’ sweet. A bookcase, some windows, a kitchen behind an island with barstools… He could see what was probably the front door, another door, and a hallway. Mental map: completed. 

The alarm had stopped by now. What time was it? Maybe Tommy’s dad had dropped him off at Jefferam’s place after he’d reconstituted himself. He wouldn’t put it past ol’ Jeffy boy to already have a new place and gig. Benry got up and stretched his arms above his head with a groan. His friend was a real one to give up his couch for however long he’d been out. He pulled the comforter off the couch and folded it as best he could. It was slap-dash, but the thought counted. 

He could at least make them some breakfast. Let no one ever say that Benry was an ungrateful houseguest. He yawned and scratched his neck. He’d need to bother Jeff for an extra set of clothes so he could shower. New flesh always felt so weird until he could scrub it. 

He padded over to the kitchen on bare feet and shivered when he touched tile. He could hear Jeff getting ready in the next room. He wondered if he’d have time for a quick game before he left for wherever. He opened the fridge and stared dumbly for a few seconds.

There was regular milk, chocolate milk, some eggs, condiments... Not much. He glanced around. Well, they had bread, so he could make crow’s nests. Maybe he’d offer to buy groceries later. He pulled the eggs out of the fridge and went looking for a pan and a knife.

The pan was heating up on the stove and Benry was cutting circles out of the bread slices when he heard someone walking down the hall. He didn’t look up, eyes narrowed and focused entirely on making perfect shapes. 

“Hey, man, you need to go grocery shopping. Yuh- You’re fridge looking a little bit, uh, fail there, broski.”

“Good morning to you too, Benry,” Gordon chuckled. 

Benry startled, flinging the butter knife into the sink with a clatter. Whoops. His heart leaped in his chest like he'd been zapped. He turned his head towards the voice, mismatched eyes snapping upwards to meet green ones. 

There was Gordon Freeman, in the flesh, leaning against the kitchen island with a little smile gracing his lips. Benry felt heat touch his cheeks and the back of his neck. Oh. Fuck.

“Uhh….”

“How did you sleep?”

“F-Fine, I guess? Is this, uh, your apartment?”

Gordon laughed and sat on one of the barstools. It was a pretty laugh- one that Benry had only heard rarely at the start of their adventure (and not at all after ‘The Betrayal'). Gordon set his elbows on the counter and leaned his cheek on his hand. The light came in from the windows behind him and caught in his hair- turning strands of brunette into an almost-auburn. The freckles over Gordon's shoulders were visible in his tank top. Benry’s heart skipped.

“What was your first clue, genius?” Gordon teased, but his eyes were warm. Way too warm. Gordon hated him. Benry glanced from side to side. Where was the hidden camera?

“Uhhh, when I saw you. I see that, uh, l-little, clumsy boy got his hand back?” Benry’s mouth was running before he could catch it yet again. Stupid. Why did he have to antagonize him now? He wasn’t the big boss anymore. Uncool, motormouth. Still, maybe it was best he play his part. He didn't have the right to ask to be forgiven. 

“Oh! This?” Gordon asked, sitting up and extending his arm for him to see. Not even a scar was left behind to show the consequences of Benry’s miscalculation. “Tommy’s dad got me a new one after we beat the game. He also, uh, explained some stuff to me.”

“Oh, huh, and what- what knowledge bombs did Mr. Coolatta drop on you? My stats? Speedrun strats for killing me better?”

Gordon’s gaze dropped to the fake wood grain of the counter. It was cheap looking, like elementary school desks. “He told me that you had to be the final boss for us to leave, Benry.”

“O-Oh, well… Yeah. Can’t have a story without conflict, you know? And we already didn’t get along, so… Easy choice.”

“Benry. I killed you,” Gordon said, sounding somewhat pained. Dammit. Tommy's dad should keep his mouth shut. 

“Yeah, well… I cut off your- your arm. So, we’re even.”

Benry turned quickly back to the stovetop. His cheeks were burning and he didn’t know what his heart was even trying to do in his ribcage. Fucking, treating his chest like an escape room maybe, or pounding out the Konami Code. 

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, start. Cheat unlocked: Benry gets a cornerary. 

Benry scooped out a glob of margarine for the pan, busying himself with making breakfast. The bread slices with the cut outs went into the pan next, then he cracked an egg into each of them.

“...What are you making?” Gordon asked. Benry had half-expected him to blow up in anger again at the reminder of Benry’s betrayal. Or at least leave the kitchen. Benry flexed his toes nervously against the curly-cue patterned linoleum tile. 

“Crow’s nests. You didn’t have anything else. G-Grocery Failman. Not even any sriracha. Cringe,” he said, trailing off to muttering halfway through. He still refused to look at Gordon. He could continue to be mean, but now that Gordon knew the truth... It would just be pathetic, wouldn’t it? But he didn't know how else to act. He knew he came off as annoying, he wasn't dumb. If Gordon hated him when he was trying to be hated, that was one thing, but what if he tried to be good and still fucked it up?

“...Even before you cut off my arm, I wasn’t nice to you.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.” Benry prayed that the floor would swallow him. 

“You were just trying to do your job-”

“No!” Benry snapped, hand tightening around the pan’s handle. “I wasn’t. I was- I was supposed to be a nice cool. I didn’t have to follow you around like a, like a peeper puppy.”

“I forgave Bubby, you know. Why should I make a special exception to continue hating you?”

Benry said nothing. He couldn't even make himself apologise properly and here was Gordon Freeman being the bigger man. He dug around in one of the cupboards for peanut butter. He could hear Gordon shuffling around behind him; standing up, coming around the counter, standing right behind him… He leaned over until Benry had no choice but to see him out of the corner of his eye.

“Let’s start over,” Gordon said. His green eyes were bright as he gave a somewhat nervous smile. He extended a hand. “Hi, I’m Gordon Freeman. I used to work at Black Mesa.”

Benry stared at the offered limb blankly for a second. He put down the jar and hesitantly, like he was scared this was some kind of mean joke, reached up to grasp Gordon’s hand. He shook it once, twice. 

“I’m Benry. Nice to meet you.” 

Gordon beamed at him. Benry tried to smile back. It must have looked weird on his face, but Gordon only chuckled. “Do you want some help?” Gordon asked.

“You gotta, uh, go wash your hands first. For kitchen clearance.”

“Did you?” Gordon asked, raising an eyebrow.

“N-No, but I’m not the dirty little sewage boy, am I?”

Gordon snorted a laugh and went to the sink. “Alright, alright, I’ll wash them. You’re the one who’s been in some weird stasis for a week. Smelly.”

Benry surreptitiously sniffed his shirt. No, Gordon had just been teasing him. The embarrassment that bloomed in his gut turned to something else. It was nice to be joked with. “Y-You're the one who never changed out of that HEV suit.”

Gordon laughed. “You were wearing a uniform too!”

“I had copies of the same outfit.”

“Bullshit. Okay, my hands are clean, what do I do?” Gordon asked.

“Take the circles and make little peanut butter sandwiches. You didn’t have jelly because you suck. The eggs should be done soon,” Benry said. Gordon moved to do as he was asked- did he just stick his tongue out at him? Benry blinked and the gesture was gone. Who knew Gordon could be childish? Benry guessed that being out of Black Mesa chilled him out. 

Benry finished the crow’s nests and split them between two plates. He grabbed some ketchup to put on his- although he’d have preferred hot sauce. He should make Gordon a list since he failed at homekeeping so hard. He shooed the other man away from the peanut butter sandwiches when he was taking too long.

“I’ll finish these you, uh, go set the table.” 

“I don’t have a table, Benry,” he said, amused.

“Go set the… counter.”

Gordon rolled his eyes, but it was distinctly more fond than it’d been in Black Mesa. He laid out silverware and cups of water while Benry finished plating their breakfast. Benry set down their plates and sat beside Gordon. Only a little bit awkwardly this time. He hadn't expected him to put the two of them so close together with three chairs. 

“Thanks for making breakfast,” Gordon said. 

“It’s no problemo,” Benry said, waving him off. He shoved an entire crow’s nest into his mouth in horror. Stupid, stupid motormouth. 

“Did you just say ‘problemo’...?”

“You’re hearing things,” Benry said around his mouth of food. Gordon scrunched his nose in disgust and laughed.

“Ewww- chew and swallow, dude.”

“You’d know about swallowing, huh, Gordon?”

Gordon laughed again, then paused. “Is that the first time you’ve called me Gordon?”

“I dunno, maybe.”

“It’s nice. I like it… better than ‘Feetman’, at least.” 

The two of them finished eating in silence with the sunlight beaming across their backs. Benry kicked his feet back and forth- a little too short for them to touch the floor. Gordon was a warm and solid presence at his side. Benry dragged his fork through the swirls of ketchup left on his plate.

“So, um, what am I doing in your apartment?”

“Oh! Well, you were supposed to come with us to Tommy’s birthday party, but we’d done a real number on you… Mr. Coolatta was going to stick you back in the void to heal. It didn't sit right with me, so I offered to watch you." 

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know,” Gordon said, glancing over at Benry, “but I wanted to.”

“...Can I use your shower?” Benry muttered, cheeks burning. He didn’t know if he could handle this without some time to decompress.

“Oh, yeah! Sure! I can get you some spare clothes, too? And throw your uniform in the wash.”

Benry nodded wordlessly and gathered their dishes. He put them in the sink and put some water over them. He’d get to them after. Gordon drifted back to his room to get Benry a change of clothes. 

“Bathroom’s just down this hall, to the right!”

“Thanks,” Benry said and ducked into the small bathroom as quickly as he could. He glanced at himself in the mirror, ghosting a hand over his face. When was the last time he’d seen his reflection? He looked human now, but he must have been a nightmare at Black Mesa. All distorted to the Nihilanth’s proportions… There was a knock on the door.

“Here, I just got you a hoodie and some sweats, if that’s okay?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Benry said, opening the door just enough to grab the offered clothes. The hoodie was on the top of the pile- MIT embroidered onto the front. Benry’s heart fluttered as he caught the scent of Gordon’s cologne. 

“Oh, yeah,” Gordon said through the bathroom door, “I texted the others. They’re going to come by later to see how you’re doing. Tommy says he missed you.”

“That’s bitchin’,” Benry said, a smile tugging at his mouth, “we should, uh, order pizza for lunch.”

“That sounds fine to me!” Gordon called back, voice getting further away as he went to tell the others. Benry hugged the clothes to his chest.

Outside the window, morning fog tapped across the glass. Another beautiful day in Silent Hill. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: unreality, mention of past murder/amputation, psychological horror


	5. Bridgepath Apartments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon explores an abandoned building
> 
> (tws in endnote)

The humming rose to a fever pitch that buzzed in Gordon’s teeth and put a sickening weight in his stomach. He could feel it in his eyes, his bones, under his fingernails. The siren was a far away whine that was getting closer. The doppler effect equation flashed behind his eyelids. 

All around him there were clusters of blue lights closing in. They were vague, just beyond the mist, like christmas lights buried under snow. Their calming hue and cheerful twinkling did nothing to belie their danger. At this distance, you couldn’t see the bugs. 

Gordon’s wound screamed pain and heat where a dime-sized hole was punched through his neck. Blood gurgled out between his desperate fingertips in time with his frantic heartbeat. The heady scent of iron was becoming heavier by the second, but the wasp must have missed the artery. He’d have already bled out otherwise. 

“Fuck, shit- fucking, dammit!” Gordon hissed under his breath. He pulled uselessly at the last door in the line of shops. Locked. Just like every other door in this fucking town, apparently. Gordon pounded on the door in anger. “Fucking- OPEN! HELLO, ANYONE?!”

He punched the glass and immediately regretted his decision. He stumbled away clutching his hand. It felt like hitting concrete. Another terrible draining feeling came from his chest. He pushed himself away from the door, stumbling onto the sidewalk. He knew this feeling. He was being directed. 

His stomach churned as he dodged under another swarm of Will o’ Wasps. He’d thought he was done with this. Fuck Xen and all its fucked up aliens. 

He came to a three-way intersection, Matheson and Ellroy, but he didn’t want to have to cross the street to go north. He didn’t want to be in the street at all, he discovered, since that was where most of the insects were gathering. There were more of them now. It was like a rave party with shitty experimental music and only one color of glow stick. 

Gordon continued cursing if only to comfort himself. There was a footpath heading south that he took. A thin lawn with a few dead trees separated him from the growing hoard. It wasn’t much, but it was something. He tried the doors of every house he passed. They all rattled and thumped mockingly at him. No sanctuary here. Not even a weapon.

He didn’t bother turning back onto Blotch. He hadn’t seen anything of interest besides more rows of probably-locked houses, anyway. He ran right across the street while sticking to Ellroy. There was another gas station and its parking lot was a veritable car graveyard of rotting chassises. Gordon had the frightful idea of opening one of those cars and disturbing a nest or- or _hive_ , of those… things. 

He let out a frightened laugh and kept running. 

He passed by another store, another house, but then there was a _gate_. An _open_ gate that led into some sort of courtyard? Or perhaps a parking lot? It didn’t really matter. Gordon could take a hint. If it was open, it was important. He jumped over the curb like the devil himself was on his heels.

“Gordon SPRINT!” 

His boots slapped the asphalt as his vision tunneled. He could see another door- a porch light was lit above it. The screen tore at the edges of his vision as the siren got more and more garbled. The world swam as the bloodloss started to get to him. He slammed his shoulder against the door as he shoved his hand in his pocket.

A cheerful plaque beside the door introduced the building as ‘Bridgepath Apartments’.

Gordon pulled out the key he’d taken from the corpse in Happy Burger. A square of masking tape was clinging to it for dear life. ‘Bridgepath Apartments’ stared back at him in sharpie from the makeshift label. 

Gordon shoved the key in the door. His hands shook so bad it took him a few tries- scraping away paint and scuffing the metal before he could enter the lock. A haze of blue light fell over him from behind. He turned- turned- turned- _turned-_

The key snapped right in half as the door flew open under his weight. Gordon yelped as he was thrown to the ground onto thin, musty carpeting. The heavy door slammed shut behind him. The humming stopped. Gordon wheezed and dug his nails into the carpet. How far had he ran in one go?

He dragged himself up to lean against the wall, clutching his neck again. He sucked air into his bone dry throat and cringed in pain when he tried to swallow. Gordon pressed his forehead against the cool plaster of the wall. The hallway was dark, empty.

He closed his eyes and steeled his nerves. When he opened them, the sirens had stopped.

Something had changed. He could feel it. 

He squinted in the dimness of the hallway. The lack of light was both worrisome and relieving: there were no Will o’ Wasps in here, but if there was something else… Gordon wouldn’t be able to see it. There was a new heaviness to the air. It set Gordon's teeth on edge. 

He shook his head. He needed to get a grip and keep moving. He groaned as he pulled his aching legs back underneath himself and stood. The old paint came off in flakes where he leaned against the wall. He hoped that didn’t have lead in it. 

His eyes were starting to adjust. He turned in a slow circle, trying to get his bearings. The corridor was narrow, barely enough for two people to walk beside each other. The building was clearly abandoned but seemed structurally sound. It was too dark to read any of the notices on the walls. He needed to find a flashlight.

The door he’d just entered through was bound in thick, industrial chains. Gordon’s eyes widened as he reached out to touch them. They were cold, rusty, and undeniably real when he yanked on them. There wasn’t even a padlock, just a continuous string anchored into the wall. He’d only closed his eyes for a second-!

He could turn the knob, but the door only opened inward and was blocked by its bindings. He was trapped.

“I’m losing my mind,” Gordon half-laughed, backing away from the door, “Did I pass out from blood loss or something?!”

The hallway gave no answer.

“I… I need to find somewhere to bandage this."

There was a rattling sound behind him as soon as he turned around. Gordon paused, digging his fingers into his shoulder with a wince. What could it be this time? He was torn between being terrified and being annoyed. He glanced behind him.

There, tangled in the chains, was a crowbar. He grit his teeth.

“Thanks!” he bit out sarcastically as he grabbed the crowbar and tugged it free. Why couldn’t the town give him a weapon _before_ it sent monsters after him?!

Gordon shouldered his backpack with as much dignity as he could muster. This dilapidated apartment building wasn’t going to explore itself, after all. He put one hand out in front of himself so he wouldn’t bump into anything and walked along the wall to the first door. 

Apartment numbers 102, 103, and 101 were all locked. Gordon wasn’t even surprised. At this point, the town should just draw him a dotted line on the floor so he could go where it wanted faster. Gordon paused with his hand over the handle for apartment 104.

When had he started thinking of the antagonist as ‘the town’ and not as ‘Benry’? It was Benry’s fault he was even here in the first place.

The door opened without a sound. Inside was a small, barely furnished apartment. It was all one room with a kitchenette and a door that presumably led to a bathroom. A small amount of muddied grey light seeped in from the dirty window. Gordon reached out to grope blindly for the lightswitch. A bare bulb struggled to light up in the living room.

And promptly exploded.

“Fuck!” Gordon yelped, flipping the switch down again uselessly. So, no light then. The porch light had been a one time thing. Got it.

At least in that moment of brightness he hadn’t spied any more of those _things_ or any corpses that might be hiding them. That was a good sign, right? As much as a sign could be good in Silent Hill. Gordon picked his way carefully across the room, bits of glass crunching under his feet.

There weren't any personal articles for him to snoop through. A bare, moldy mattress lay on the floor between some broken kitchen chairs. The only serviceable furniture was a desk and a battered wooden stool in front of it. Gordon drew closer. There was something on the desk. 

A note, a bottle, and a box.

Gordon picked up the note first, pulling it close to his face to read it in the low light from the window. 

_‘The guy next door is so creepy!_

_I can hear him muttering to himself all the time, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him._

_These got put into my mailbox by mistake. I don’t think I’m going to give them to him.’_

What would they want to keep from their neighbour-? Gordon reached for the box and squinted through his dirty glasses. 

Handgun bullets. Bullets meant a gun. The guy next door had a _gun_. Did he still have it? Gordon loved his crowbar, but he didn’t want to have to get close enough to those things to use it. He squeezed the handle of his trusty melee weapon. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be as easy as going next door to take it.

He picked up the bottle next. It looked like one of those five-hour energies. Most of the text was in Japanese, but Gordon could make out ‘Health Drink’ on the front. He cautiously opened the bottle, tilted away from him, then took a sniff when it didn’t immediately explode. It smelt extremely herbal and fresh. Gordon knew it was stupid to eat or drink anything here, but if Benry was going to kill him it wouldn’t be through poisoning. Something in his gut told him it was safe too. He gnawed on his bottom lip for a second. Decisions, decisions. 

“Fuck it, right?” he muttered, before throwing the entire thing back like a shot. Immediately, the feeling of anemia passed. He let out a soft sigh. The headache that had been building from dehydration dissipated like a tennis ball through a spider web. He’d definitely be on the look out for more of those.

While he was there, he pulled his First Aid kit out of his backpack to tape a gauze pad over his wound. The bleeding was slowing and would stop soon. He felt much better when he headed back into the hallway. He turned to the next door with anticipation. 

It was locked, of course, but something was different about it. This door was meant to be opened- he could feel it. He just needed a way to do it. There was a dropbox on the front of the door and something scratched into the wood above it that he couldn’t read in the dark. It was room number 105. He’d have to come back.

106, 107, 109 were locked, jammed, and busted. At least it kept him from wasting time. 108, however… The door at the very end of the hall was cracked open and light shone out. Gordon swallowed thickly and readjusted his grip on his crowbar. 

“Hello?” he called, “Dr Coomer?”

There was no answer.

Gordon headed towards the light, crowbar raised. 

The scent of iron hit him again, but this time it was unaccompanied by rot. The room was bare of all furniture except for a couch and loveseat- both covered with plastic tarps. The apartment was coated from carpet to ceiling in blood. It dripped down the walls in lazy rivers and from the ceiling with a soft pitter-patter like red rain. 

In the middle of the horror was a corpse, hacked into more pieces than was practical. Either someone had a vendetta and freetime or a bomb had gone off in this room not thirty seconds before. Gordon shut his eyes and breathed out slowly. 

The couches, even with the tarps, were remarkably untouched. They stood like bulky ghosts in the red room. Gordon tried to ignore the steaming viscera as he passed over to them. He caught a glance in the corner of his eye and steadfastly stared forward. There was a headlamp on the couch, hung carelessly over the pristine arm of the sofa. It was the kind a child might have to read under their covers at night. A tiny metal statuette of a dragon, standing rampant, sat on the cushion next to it. There was a slip of paper tied around its neck. 

Gordon snatched both from the couch with his nose scrunched. _Of course_ , there would be important items in _this_ room. He just couldn’t get a break. He shoved the dragon in his bag and examined the flashlight more closely. He’d just adjusted the band comfortably around his head when he heard something from behind him

Gordon didn’t want to turn around. 

Gordon turned around. 

The corpse started to move. 

The wasps had been one thing. They could have just been another creature from Xen, something he’d missed the first time he went there. Perhaps something that had been genetically modified in the weeks since, if he were to suspend his disbelief. They had reasonable proportions, a plausible diet, and Gordon might be able to hazard a guess at how their hives were structured. They, like all the aliens he’d seen at Black Mesa, were just animals. Simple. Logical. 

Even Benry’s skeletons had a tangible energy around them; either being controlled by him or the man himself in some state of regeneration. A psychic force. A vague light. Sci-fi bullshit, but at least it was pseudo-scientific. If jellyfish could revert to childhood to live forever, who knew what was possible? 

The corpse rose into the air in pieces, coming back together in the vague shape of a human. A jigsaw person. An open mockery of everything logical and sane. A ribcage, a pelvis, a coil of intestines sandwiched between the two, a skeletal hand, a bare shin and foot, miscellaneous chunks of meat. A grinning skull. One eye. A military beret sat at a jaunty angle on top to tie the whole nightmare together.

There was no way this thing evolved. There was no energy around it. There could be no scientific explanation. It simply, maddeningly, _was_. 

It wasn’t proportional. It was like someone had taken all the prop body parts at a halloween store and tried to form a person with them. Gordon couldn’t conceptualize the parts and the whole at once. It didn’t compute. 

The textures on the walls smeared, the quality punching down to 144p. They reloaded and returned to high definition. Gordon could see the animation stutter now. How hadn’t he noticed? How could he have not known? How could he have forgotten?

They’d escaped to the real world, right? Right?

It was gibs. It was just giblets that thought it was still an enemy. It drifted towards him, bobbing slightly in the air. The animations were broken. It had no walk cycle.

He was in Hell. He was in actual, biblical Hell. And Hell was a Bethesda game.

Gordon swung his crowbar with a frightened scream. He swung it again, and again, and again. He didn’t want to see how this thing would attack him. He couldn’t even imagine how it would manage. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t. 

The Gibbed fell to the floor in a heap. Gordon started stomping on it. He didn’t know what part of it held the _heart_? The _brain_? But he had to make sure it was destroyed. If it stood again he’d cry. He let out a low, distressed keen like a wounded animal. The monster let out a gurgle. The bones crunched under his heavy boots.

Gordon ran out of the room, but only made it to the other side of the hall before he was spewing bile onto the carpet. His balance was skewed by his panic until he felt like the room was spinning. The door to 107 was open. He threw himself over the threshold and the door slammed shut behind him.

He leaned against the solid wood and reached down to paw at the lock. It took him a few tries before he could be sure he would be left alone. The door felt real- like paint chips and splinters. He slid down to sit on the floor. It all felt real. He breathed deeply and tasted dust, mold, bile, blood. 

Slowly, he reached up to his face. His hand touched his own cheek unimpeded. He pulled off his glasses. Nothing. He put them back on and felt around the back of his head. His wrists. All bare, as they should be. He wasn’t wearing a VR headset. The town was just messing with him.

(or he wasn’t The Player anymore)

(was he real?)

Gordon stood quickly, pulling away from the thought like it burned. No. No, he couldn’t have a breakdown here. He needed to find the others. Black Mesa had been scary too, but he’d made it through there. He’d even had fun at points. It would get better if he could find his friends. His _very real_ , thinking, feeling, _sapient_ friends. 

He tore through the room for supplies. There was only another one of those ‘Health Drinks’. He pocketed it. It wasn’t as good as a Black Mesa health station, but it would do in a pinch. 

He never thought he’d miss headcrabs and peeper puppies. 

Gordon opened the door, poking his head out. All was quiet on the other side of the hall. He must have killed whatever that thing was. He stepped back out into the hall and headed for room 105. It was time to see what that carving in the door said. 

_‘A beast of red on death's wings flies_

_to burn wheat fields and darken skies_

_by morning light, we shall be ash_

_Who could have picked a different path?_

_to act as key you must decide_

_on whose shoulders does blame reside_

_XXXX’_

It was a puzzle, he could tell that much. A beast of red… Could it be talking about the dragon statuette? Gordon tucked his crowbar under his arm and took off his backpack. He pulled the tarnished silver figure out of a side pocket and plucked the note from around its neck

_‘A terrible dragon plagues our land_

_a mindless beast who can't understand_

_men, women, and cattle it will cull_

_It sinks fang into meat until it is full_

_So slay it, please, o’ gallant knight_

_else, o’ death, save us from our plight’_

__

“We get it, you passed 9th grade English,” Gordon muttered as he rolled the note back up. It wouldn’t be as easy as putting the dragon in there, would it? The first poem implied there would be multiple choices. He sighed. He’d have to check around the rest of the apartment building for more statues. 

The staircase across from the room was unblocked, so Gordon headed upstairs. The space was cavernous and dark- silent like the grave. He doubted he’d be attacked here but it didn’t make it any less creepy. He held tightly to the rusty railing as he ascended. A blink and he was at the top of the stairs. Some debris blocked him from going any higher than the second floor. It was where he was heading anyway, but the fact was still annoying. He hoped the second stairwell had third floor access because there was no way he was scaling the building from the outside. He cracked the available door open an inch and peered out with narrowed eyes. 

There were blue lights and shadows dancing along the walls. They were swarming around the end of the hallway, having not noticed him yet, but he kept a white-knuckled grip on his crowbar anyway. He could take out a few bugs. He wasn’t so defenseless anymore. 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. 

Gordon stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him as quietly as possible. He didn’t want to fight if he could avoid it. Without his team, stealth was an actual choice. He checked the doors as he crept along. 205, directly across from the stairs, was locked. Typical. He glanced over his shoulder at the lights while he opened room 206. The smell of iron hit him.

Two of those floating corpses stared at him eyelessly from the door. He slammed it shut. 

The humming grew louder. The Will o’ Wasps had noticed him.

Fuck. 

The insects chewed up the distance between them rapidly. He barely had a chance to swat one of them to the ground with his weapon before he was surrounded. “Fuck off!” he yelped as he jabbed at one that had been trying to fly directly at his face. It backed off as it swayed back and forth in the air; considering him. 

“These things would be way less annoying if they didn’t attack in groups,” Gordon huffed, stomping on the wasp that had been trying to get back up, “Well?! Who’s next?”

The remaining two dive-bombed him in turns until he managed to knock both of them to the floor. He stomped on the viciously with a joyful laugh. “How do you like me now, you Benry Parasites?!” he shouted, digging his heel into one of them until it started to seep red-black ichor into the carpet, “Not so tough no- GUH!”

The white-hot feeling of being stabbed bloomed from underneath his shoulder blade. He’d missed one while gloating and it had gotten behind him. He thrashed and spun as he tried to dislodge the monster. His crowbar glanced harmlessly over the walls of the hallway. He slammed his back against the drywall, but only managed to sink the needle further in.

“Get out!” he shrieked, feeling vertigo and nausea roll over him. He gagged and stumbled forward a few steps. The light around him faded from bright, calming blue to a hot, dangerous red. The wasp retreated with a horrible sucking sound, “Bluh…”

Gordon turned to face the bug, swaying lightly on his feet. His arm ached and lifting his crowbar sent flashes of pain through his ribs. The wasp refused to rush him again- its drained blister belly was now distended with blood. Gordon grit his teeth and wiped the cold sweat from his face. 

“What are you waiting for?!” he snapped. The blood in the wasp started to boil until steam was pouring out the needle like a kettle’s spout. “Wuh-”

The red light around it started to flash. “Wait-”

Then it exploded, sending out a spray of crimson acid that pockmarked the walls and burned Gordon’s face. The wasp was killed in the process, but he was too busy screaming to appreciate that fact. He scrambled for the nearest door: 209. It opened as he furiously scrubbed at his face with his hoodie sleeve. The sound of humming was gone and the only smell was burnt skin and hair. Gordon had no choice but to hope for no new monsters since he was blind at the moment. He scrambled to pull the health drink from his backpack and downed it quickly. The door slammed behind him- the sound effect played twice. 

He gasped for breath as the holes on his skin closed and his blood replenished. This was getting ridiculous. He needed to get back into his murder-groove before he was seriously injured without health supplies. If that happened, he’d really be up shit’s creek without a paddle. He shook off the creeping feeling of his skin and started to investigate the room.

It was another barely furnished apartment, this time choked in black stains instead of blood. Gordon hoped it was some sort of monster… juice… and not, ya know, black mold. He should have brought a respirator. The only thing he found of interest was an old newspaper.

It told the story of some sort of accident involving an ex-cop and his friend. There had been some kind of incident during a hunting trip, once presumed an accident, with new evidence suggesting foul play. Something about a rivalry or animosity between the two. Alcohol was involved. The cop had fiercely maintained his innocence. Most of the paper was smudged beyond comprehension, but Gordon could make out the word ‘acquitted’. He sighed as he tossed it back down. Useless.

Gordon paced the length of the room until he couldn’t rationalise stalling any longer. If he was quick, maybe he could outrun any other monsters he saw. He just needed to remember what rooms were safe to hide in. He could just go and get it over with.

The last two rooms on the north side of the hallway were locked, but the second staircase _did_ have third floor access. Tiny victories. Gordon turned around to check the rooms he’d missed now that the Will o’ Wasps were gone. Apartment number 201 was locked, and apartment number 204…

...Had more fucking wasps. Gordon didn’t hesitate this time; he rushed in, swinging his crowbar like a madman. He kept spinning until he made himself dizzy. He was not going to get stabbed in the back again. He didn’t stop until the insects were an unidentifiable mash on the ground and he was out of breath. 

“Woo… This, uh, this is a lot harder without the HEV suit,” he panted. He headed across the room to the kitchenette’s counter. There was a key and another note. It was all wild speculation on the man who lived in 105- how he killed his friend on purpose and what reasons he might have for doing so. Was it money? They'd been trying to put a side business together, hadn't they? Or women? Didn't the cop used to be married? His friend was so handsome before he got his face blown off, maybe he'd been screwing around. 

Maybe he was just crazy. It wasn't safe to be around the man from 105. What a freak. Gordon crumpled up the paper. 

The key was labelled ‘306’.

Gordon shoved the note and key into his pocket with a sigh. Once again, he had a feeling today was going to be a long day. 203 was locked and he was vaguely grateful; one less room to search. The room across the hall, 202, opened. Gordon swung his crowbar the second the door opened. 

It was unnecessary. This room was better furnished than the others- almost every wall was occupied by a bookshelf. The sofa looked overstuffed and soft, if a little moth eaten. The kitchenette was bare. On the coffee table in front of the sofa, there was an oak box covered in ornate carvings of flora. 

Gordon picked it up. The top of the box had three indents- each in the shape of a diamond, with a bit of colorful felt at the bottom. Red, Blue, Yellow. Gordon tried to open it but it was stuck tight. He set it back down on the table and lifted his crowbar. A red haze of pain bloomed behind his eyes. He hissed and turned away from the box. Nope. He should have known it wouldn’t be that simple. He had one more set of things to hunt for, he guessed. The town probably didn’t want the box to leave this room either. 

Gordon shook his head and went over to the bookshelves. The titles were muddy and unreadable on the spines of the books; Gordon was lucky if he was able to make out even one title per shelf he checked. He tried to pick up one of the books that he couldn’t read and his fingers brushed against a perfect, smooth wall.

Gordon retreated back into the hallway. It was time to check the third floor.

* * *

The top floor was much of the same. 308, 301, and 304 were all unenterable. 309 had a note in it; 

_‘Melissa got away from me today while I was bringing the groceries upstairs. I found her talking to the man in room 105 through his mail slot; it almost gave me a heart attack! I dragged her away and told her that she shouldn’t bother him again. What else could I have said? I didn’t want to scare her._

_I should talk to management. Why is someone so dangerous allowed to live here?’_

From what he could gather, Gordon was beginning to wonder that himself. The man in 105 seemed like some sort of unstable shut-in. If he’d caught Joshua talking to someone like that…Gordon frowned. He hoped Joshua was alright with his babysitter. He looked around the room and found nothing else that looked important. Gordon had started to psyche himself up before opening any new doors, not wanting to be caught off guard again. He threw open the apartment door and all but ran across the hall.

Apartment 307 had old tube TVs and miscellaneous machinery scattered about the floor. The trash bunched into piles in the corners and along the walls, closing off all but the living room for exploration. There were wires set like snares across every clear patch of carpet and the taste of static hung in the air. Some of the TVs were playing white snow without any sound. The only furniture in the room- a leather armchair- was set in the middle of the chaos like a mundane altar. 

There was another statuette on the chair- a short male figure with a helmet and crossbow. The figure was copper and oxidation had turned its tunic to a shade of green-blue. Gordon picked it up and took the slip of paper from the gap between arm and torso.

_‘The squire’s task he must abide_

_To guard and_ _aid at his knight’s side_

_But the squire liked jokes and often they’d fight_

_He was scolded so harshly he fled camp by night_

_He took knight's shield and his silvery sword_

_and left him alone to face the dragon’s horde’_

__

Gordon frowned down at the figure. There was a coldness in his gut when he looked at it. The man’s face was either petrified or smirking depending on how the light hit it. He put it into his backpack quickly. He could solve the door puzzle later, but he needed to finish exploring soon. He glanced around the room uneasily before heading out.

The apartment key for 306 was burning a hole in his pocket- it was as good a place to check next as any. The key slid smoothly into the lock and turned, but refused to come out again after. Gordon checked the hallway for more monsters before letting himself in. All seemed calm. He knew better than to trust the town, though.

The room smelt sweet, and soft, and a whole lot cleaner than the other apartments. It was the most normal out of any he’d seen so far. It was like the family who lived here had just stepped out for a moment. And it was a family- there were pictures dotted all over the tastefully papered walls. A blond husband, a brunette wife, and a baby. It felt… safe. 

Gordon felt like an intruder or some kind of night prowler. He didn’t belong here. Was he really invading one of the last nice places in Silent Hill? He walked softly across the carpet, tracking blood and muck across the entryway. He examined the tableau of domesticity in silence; touching baubles with fingertips, examining pictures, and feeling some distant sadness. 

He missed Joshua. There was a crib by the couch- maybe so that the baby could nap beside its parents while they watched tv or read. He sat for a second. He felt so tired, he’d been running all day. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, you know. He sighed heavily and wiped his eyes under his glasses. 

He paused when he saw a glint of yellow from inside the crib. A glittering gemstone was tucked in where the baby should be. He supposed it was some kind of topaz, but he couldn’t help his shiver of distaste. It reminded him too much of… well. He swallowed heavily as he picked it up.

“Crystal get,” Gordon muttered under his breath as he tucked it away. The room suddenly felt much less inviting. He stood and left as silently as he’d come in. 

305’s gemstone had a much less romantic presentation. It was cast aside carelessly in a half-open drawer. The desk it was in had an avalanche of papers across the top of it, spilling down the sides and onto the floor. Gordon never would have noticed it if it wasn’t a fiery red that glimmered in the low light. Ruby. Two out of three. 

The door to 303 was locked but gave Gordon the same creeping feeling as before that it was meant to be opened. He tried to store it in his memory as he turned to open door 302.

Another Gibbed monster and a swarm of three wasps. Gordon grit his teeth and moved to slam the door.

The final gemstone, a glowing blue sapphire, hung from the ceiling light on a string. Two wasps- he’d mistaken the item for a third. Of course. The town couldn’t just let him pick all his battles, right? Gordon forced his hand off the knob as the creature shamble-floated closer to him. He lifted his crowbar and prayed whatever was in that box was worth it.

He bashed the creature over the skull once, twice, until its head caved in. Still, it swiped at him and tried to get closer. What was it trying to do, hug him? Or grapple him to the floor? Gordon swung his weapon low and lodged the crook of it into The Gibbed’s guts. He wrenched it like he was trying to open a stuck door and the creature screamed out in radio feedback. He stomped it when it hit the ground for good measure.

The wasps were easy for him to kill now. He knew how to handle them- it was a learning curve, like at Black Mesa. Gordon shook off the jittery feeling of leftover adrenaline and stepped over the corpses to the last gemstone. He tugged the string down, pulling the sapphire free, and almost pissed himself when an intercom crackled to life.

DOCTOR. BUBBY. REPORT FOR. PROCESSING. AT. POLICE STATION. IMMEDIATELY. 

Gordon’s grip tightened around the jewel. That was the Black Mesa Vox. He’d heard it day in and day out for years until it started mocking him and his friends after the Resonance Cascade. He might have been given a clue, but he was also being mocked. 

“Benry, you son of a bitch-” he hissed under his breath before marching back into the hallway. He was tired of these puzzles and creatures. He just wanted to get his friends and go home, not be led on a wild goose chase. Benry was going to pay for this. No one fucked with the science team. 

* * *

The ornate box in room 202 sat on his lap. He eyed it suspiciously like he could intimidate it into giving him its secrets with his gaze alone. It wouldn't explode the second he put the gems in, would it? The town- Benry- seemed to be playing fair so far. It had given him clues and he’d found a solution. It was all above board. He rolled the gemstones on his hand like dice as he debated with himself.

Well, he’d never know unless he tried. He carefully slotted each jewel into its proper fitting. The latch clicked and he set the box back on the table. He carefully flipped the lid open with his crowbar.

Inside was a key labelled ‘303’ and another statuette. It was a spear stuck into the earth, leaning against a shiny gold crown. Gordon picked it up and turned it in the light; it looked like real gold. The spear itself was copper again and completely oxidized, even rusted, in places. Gordon searched the box for the accompanying poem. 

_‘A decadent king at high table sits_

_he wants for praise and epithets_

_no time has he for knightly woes_

_only a pig-spear to fight his foes_

_to impress his guests he does desire_

_so use mere trash to defeat the fire’_

__

Gordon could see where they were going with this. He tossed the statuette into his bag and stood up. He groaned when his knees cracked and back creaked. He wasn’t looking forward to running up those stairs again… It wasn’t like he had a choice, though. If the ‘X’s on the door poem had been indicators, there was only one statuette left and one door to find it behind. Gordon stretched as best as he could and continued on his way.

The third floor was even darker, somehow, when he returned to it. The silence was so thick you could cut it with a knife, but all Gordon had was a crowbar. He crept down the hallway with his weapon at the ready until he reached the final door at the end of the hall. The key turned with a soft click and the door opened without even a whisper of a sound. The room was empty besides for a table smack dab in the middle of the room. There wasn’t any carpet, just hardwood, and even the kitchen appliances had been ripped out of the wall. On the table was a small radio and the last statuette. Gordon picked the statue up with no small amount of apprehension.

The figure was a knight with a terrified expression, rendered in a particularly cold and heavy iron. Gordon switched it over from his right to left hand like it had bit him. The icon’s arm was lifted as if holding a sword- but the entire piece had been rusted away. Gordon dropped it into his bag without comment before picking up the poem from the table. 

_‘The Gallant Knight is full of woe_

_No sword nor shield nor friend to show_ _  
  
_

_So stupid, so sightless, so full of rage_

_he is left with no choice but to engage_

_  
_ _The Dragon’s Lair shall become his tomb_ _  
_ _His failure has led all to doom’_

__

Gordon swallowed around the lump in his throat. He grabbed the radio almost without looking at it and clutched it close to his chest, fleeing the room. There was a low rumble of faraway static from the device as he power-walked down the hallway. Thin rivets of red dripped down from behind paint chips, but only out of the corner of his eyes. He kept his gaze ahead. His shoes squished into carpet as scarlet pooled out from under doors. He walked faster.

Somehow, he wasn’t too tired to take the stairs two at a time on the way back down. 

* * *

Gordon stood in front of room 105 with four statuettes spread out on the lip of the dropbox. He considered them, but his scientific mind wouldn’t help him here. This was poetry- philosophy- and something he felt out of his depth in. You didn’t exactly gain a soft, artistic soul from killing thousands of people. 

All the same, he needed to make a decision. 

_‘to act as key you must decide_

_on whose shoulders does blame reside’_

_Dragon - Spear - Squire - Knight_

So, what should he choose?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tws: unreality (videogame flavor), unreality (general), body horror, brief instance of emetophobia/vomitting, blood, gore, violence, police mention, needles, bugs, bad poetry. 
> 
> Hello children, it's AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION TIME. Who is the guiltiest? You get to pick! This decision may affect how the story ends. Choose carefully. Next chapter I'll tell you all what Gordon would have picked, if you choose differently from him.
> 
> Gordon's Silent Hill theme is 'Glitch'. The Gibbed monster is based on the Fallout gibs glitch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vodQHlOB_GI&ab_channel=RyonaKing). The Will o' Wasps are actually based on fucked up particle effects; they can go through walls as long as they're in the same loading zone.
> 
> Happy Friday the 13th!


	6. Spear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the direct aftermath of a choice, a quick flashback, and an aside
> 
> (tws in endnote)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The King/Spear won with more than ten votes!
> 
> If left to his own devices, Gordon would have picked the Knight. Make of that what you will.
> 
> (also I rewrote a few lines regarding the man in 105 from last chapter. Its still meant to be vague but I think it makes a bit more sense now. It's more the type of vague I wanted it to be.)

The dropbox was only big enough for one of the statuettes. It was time for Gordon to decide.

The dragon was right out since it was just a stupid animal. Animals didn’t make choices- they acted on instinct.

The squire had decided to leave the knight for dead, but.. The poem said _flee_ . That implied that they were, well, _scared_. The squire’s jokes hadn’t been mean until they’d disarmed the knight, right? Were they worried the knight was going to hurt them? Gordon wondered what they were scared of; the dragon or their master. And if they’d stayed, would it have even helped? The knight would have the sword, but would that leave the squire with the boar-hunting spear? Or defenseless?

The knight. Gordon turned the figure in his hands, thumb brushing over the rusted-away arm. He’d taken out his anger on his team until they were scared of him. That wasn’t good, but- they’d been up against a _dragon_. Anyone would be stressed out… but was that an excuse? 

The iron in his hand was cold and heavy, offering no answer. 

Gordon set the knight aside. The knight’s poem picked up after he’d already made all his bad choices. He wouldn’t be able to change anything from the end of the story. So, where did the story begin? If not the dragon, then the fault was with…

The spear- or, rather, the king. His hand hovered over the last statuette as he wavered on his decision. He bit the inside of his cheek in thought. He picked up the spear and swiped the other statuettes onto the ground in one quick motion. If he let himself keep second guessing, he’d never leave this place.

“Fuck it. This one!”

Gordon opened the lid and shoved the figure inside the receptacle with a screech of metal on metal. The lid slammed shut automatically once the Spear statuette was inside, almost taking one of Gordon’s fingers with it. It landed on the other side with an echoing thud of finality. 

There was a click. The door had unlocked itself. 

Gordon picked the crowbar back up and steeled himself for whatever horrors might lurk within. He wrapped his free hand around the doorknob and shoved the door open violently, his crowbar already swinging down through empty air. He yelped as he almost knocked himself over with his enthusiasm. Thankfully, there were no monsters waiting for him. 

The room was dim besides the warm glow of a lamp and a soundless, staticy television. There was an armchair pulled in front of the lone TV set with a dark lump sitting upon it. The apartment was normally furnished, like the room with the crib, but was also utterly trashed. There was garbage cast across the floor and every available surface; empty bottles and pages of frantic writing, mostly. There were dishes piled high in the sink. 

Gordon glanced around the room with unease. There were pictures on the walls, no wife or children this time, but friends. Fishing trips, men in pickup trucks, that kinda thing. The radio was silent at his hip. He approached the figure with his crowbar raised anyway.

“Uh, hello? Sir? Can you hear me?” he called out. 

There was no reply. In the light of the television, the man was slumped over. His eyes were peacefully shut- but Gordon turned away quickly. He wasn’t the correct type of doctor for this but he could tell he wasn’t breathing. There was something metal shining from the corpse’s lap.

Gordon picked it up. It was a handgun with a note rolled up and shoved down the barrel. He considered it solemnly before plucking it from the gun and unrolling it. It was hard to read in the light from the TV, and it was water-damaged in places, but he managed. 

_‘I can hear them, every moment of every day._

_They're talking about me,_

_whispering and calling me a monster._

_It isn't true though, I swear!_

_I don't even know what happened, but I know it wasn't me who killed him._

_Why would I kill him in the first place? He was my friend- this is the last thing I wanted!_

_It must have been an accident. There's no other way to explain it._

_It had to be an accident._

_I think they’re planning something bad._

_No one’s on my side anymore_

_I got fired, but I kept the keys. They don’t know I have it._

_I’m holding onto it. Just in case.'_

Gordon let the note slip from his fingers and flutter to the floor. He didn’t know what to think, after exploring this entire apartment building. The paranoia was thick in the air even after all the tenants had left. The corpse in the chair just looked like a sad man, but looks could be deceiving. Maybe it was more complex than one or the other being guilty. 

Gordon shook his head. It didn’t matter anymore and it certainly wasn’t of concern to him. 

There was a heavy weight in his stomach when he turned his attention to the gun. He pulled out the magazine and was both relieved and disappointed to find that it was empty. He drifted away from the sad man towards the kitchen table to set down his backpack and dig out the box of bullets he’d found.

He began to load the weapon and tried not to think about how easily it came to him. He felt muscle memory take over as he inserted each bullet with care. How many times did he load a gun in Black Mesa, just a few days worth of time, to be able to do it for life? He shoved the magazine back in place and made sure the safety was on before slipping the gun into his belt.

He packed his stuff back up and slung the backpack straps around his shoulders. He should look around for more supplies- he needed more of those health drinks, at the very least. He didn’t have enough bandages in his first AID kit to deal with the scions of Hell forever. Hadn’t the note said something about the key, too? He felt like he’d need it. 

He opened the fridge and immediately regretted the decision. Ugh. The dishes were already gross enough, but there was an entirely new ecosystem in there. He looked through the cupboard instead and found a couple bottles with the seals still intact. 

He found the keys in one of the bedside tables in what passed for a bedroom. They were laid on top of a picture of two men on a fishing trip, holding their catches. There was a label on it that read ‘Silent Hill Police Station’. Gordon’s fist closed around the key. He left before he could violate the space more than he already had.

“Rest in peace, buddy,” he muttered as he shut the door behind him.

Back in the hall, he cocked his gun and approached the chains with purpose. He aimed it at the weakest link he could find: one of the ones that had been warped by his crowbar. It all but exploded when he hit it at point blank range. He only had to fiddle with the chains for a few minutes to pull them from their metal hoops and free himself.

Gordon waded back into the mist and monsters of Silent Hill as sharp green eyes watched from above.

“Hold on, Bubby,” he muttered, “I’m coming for you.” 

* * *

The town hadn’t been so bad at first. Bubby liked long drives- the journey from New Mexico to Maine had calmed him down, if nothing else. There was nothing like breaking every speed limit and traffic law on your route to raise your spirits. The few police chases he’d gotten into hadn’t been so bad either. Entertaining.

Now, if only Coomer had told him where they were going to meet in this backwater town. He’d been relieved, although he’d never admit it, when his old friend had messaged him. A little annoyed too. If Coomer and Tommy were going to fuck off to a tourist trap vacation, couldn’t they have invited Bubby from the beginning?

Bubby could understand not inviting Gordon, though. Nice of a guy as he was, he was still a major buzzkill. Not that there was much of a buzz to kill in Silent Hill; he hadn’t seen anyone since he’d gotten here. The town was completely dead. He couldn’t even enjoy that fact by burning rubber on the roads or doing donuts in the parking lots, since he wasn’t able to get his car around the barricade. 

He could always just turn into a car, he supposed, but he didn’t want to do that in public and end up in another government lab. Not that anyone would be able to snatch him, he’d kill them first. Still, there was an off feeling about Silent Hill, like he was being watched. 

The streets that had once been wide and spacious narrowed as he progressed into the town. The cobblestones under his feet echoed his footsteps around the buildings that loomed over him. He was making such a racket just walking down the road that there’s no way that Coomer would be able to miss him- or anyone else for that matter. He frowned as the road was cut off in front of him and he had to head through an alley.

The tight space was made even tighter as trash bracketed him from both sides, keeping him from moving freely. Bubby’s palms were starting to sweat. The buildings around him had large windows that reflected light onto him- it kept him from seeing beyond their glass. He imagined a man in a white coat watching him from one of those windows. He walked faster. 

There were makeshift walls of corrugated steel as he got turned around and ended up in some kind of junkyard. He sighed. There was no way that Coomer would be here. He turned around only to be stopped by a chain link fence. He stared at it, confused.

“How the fuck do I get out of here now?” he wondered to himself.

There was a clatter from further ahead; some trash had gotten dislodged and cascaded down the piles. Bubby nearly jumped out of his skin and cursed loudly. He marched forward, the only way he could go, and tried not to focus on the antsy feeling that was building in his stomach. He could roast a few rats, no problem. They couldn’t be worse than pigeons.

“Wh- Hey! Who are you?!”

There really _was_ a man stalking him. He saw him jump down onto the path and go running ahead. A white coat fluttered behind him as he went and a sound like a titter reached Bubby’s ears. Was that Coomer? No, the figure was too tall… Maybe Tommy? Tommy would like playing tag, probably. He liked soccer. Why would he be in his science team uniform, though?

“Tommy, get back here! I’m not going to chase you, you little shit, your dad is pissed!”

The figure didn’t answer, and Bubby did, in fact, have to chase him. He grit his teeth and took off sprinting. He didn’t win all the races back in Black Mesa to be beaten in Silent Hill. He could turn into a _car_ . He’d show this young upstart the _meaning_ of speed!

Bubby followed the figure all throughout the junkyard until he was out of breath. He groaned- he wasn’t getting any younger. Thankfully, they’d looped around and now the other man was the one boxed in by the chain link fence. His back was still to Bubby but the cropped dark hair looked Tommy-ish. Bubby paused for a second with his hands on his knees to get his breath back. 

“Hey, alright, so you won the staff race, whatever. Where’s Coomer?” Bubby asked, finally fed up with this entire situation. He approached the figure. There was a soft, repeated clicking sound somewhere close by. Tommy didn’t turn around.

“Tommy? Are you listening?”

The figure moved his head in a weird way- not quite a nod or a shake. Bubby frowned and closed the distance between them, reaching for his shoulder.

“Hey- HOLY SHIT!”

The creature turned around, neck snapping as it canted at an odd angle. Bubby fell back and the rest of the body followed in another jarring movement- another snap. It wasn’t Tommy or anyone else Bubby knew, but then again, most people Bubby knew had faces. One huge mass of flesh took up all the real estate on the monster’s head. It left very little room for anything else.

It made that sound again- like the rapid clicking of a pen- and then it slashed at him. He only just managed to not get his own face ripped off.

“FUCK!” he shouted as he turned tail and ran.

Now Bubby was the one being chased through the stacks. There was clicking around every corner as more of those _things_ appeared: some just watched him impassively, without eyes, while others still leaped down to join the chase. Bubby grit his teeth. There was no room here to transform. He couldn’t even use his flames since there would be no way to control the blaze if it spread. He wasn’t Coomer, he didn’t have 20 years experience in waste disposal. 

This was a trap. He should have known.

He opened the door of a junked car and dove inside, slamming the door behind him. The power locking still worked at least. The monsters quickly surrounded him and started to shake the vehicle as he fumbled for his phone. He dialed the first number that came to mind.

“Gordon! I think I found what took Coomer and Tommy. You have to tell Mr. Coolatta we’re in Silent Hill!”

“Bubby, is that you?”

“Gordon, listen, don’t come here yourself. It’s full of creatures- like Black Mesa but more fucked up.”

“I can’t hear you, man, you’re breaking up. Can you call me back?”

“No! Listen, you have to stay away from Silent Hill!

“What?”

“Silent Hill! I was told to come here and I was stupid enough to do it. Benry has nothing on these freaks. You have to get help!”

The low tone of a dropped call was his only reply. There was a loud smash from the backseat as one of the faceless watchers broke a window. Bubby growled as he tried to punch in the number for Tommy’s dad himself, but his phone’s battery was quickly draining. Something grabbed his shoulder.

“Fuck...ing… hell…”

Bubby’s vision went dark as the driver’s side door was ripped off its hinges.

* * *

**[UNLOCKED SCENE: sometimes, in addition to helping pick the ending, your choices unlock additional scenes]**

Sunkist was the perfect dog. She didn’t chew up the furniture, she didn’t slobber on anyone who didn’t appreciate it, and she never played too rough with other dogs. That didn’t mean she didn’t feel fear. A perfect dog had a perfect range of emotions, even if she never had to fear for her own personal safety. She still whined, and paced, and pawed at the ground in nervousness. She just knew what would and wouldn’t be helpful in any given situation. 

The situation, as it stood, was very grave. 

The massive dog let out a soft sigh laden with orange to brown Sweet Voice: _‘The colors that the autumn leaves turned- I am very, very concerned._ ’

Just that much was enough to remind her of her master. Her master who had gone missing, followed by each of his friends. There was much to be concerned about. She stretched out further over the G-Man’s feet from her spot under the table. He was taking this much worse than her. Not that she could blame him: her master was his puppy. So, she offered as much warm dog belly as she could to keep him grounded.

G-Man gnawed at the end of his pen. His eyes scanned the map laid out in front of him like he could intimidate the paper into giving him answers. His face was outwardly impassive, but the aura around him was absolutely lethal. It was a good thing that Sunkist was immortal.

This was more than his son wanting some space. He’d been stolen. There were very few things capable of doing that to his progeny. His son was far from ordinary in the same way that G-Man was. His employers had shown interest in helping him once the gravity of the situation was made clear to them. They didn’t want to find their best employee snatched next, after all.

G-Man circled another town, added another name to his list of suspects, and flipped through the ancient tome written in unspeakable tongues he had open beside him. 

Whoever had taken Tommy was going to regret it. 

If they lived long enough to do so. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tws: paranoia, guilt, isolation, death/corpses, not a suicide but briefly implied/suspected to be one, police (mention), unsanitary, guns/firearm, body horror, reckless driving (mention), human experimentation (mention)
> 
> I'd like to thank dimwick for beta-reading this chapter and datanotf0und for helping me write the man in 105's note. It was hard mixing the right amount of paranoia and sympathy to keep his guilt ambiguous. 
> 
> I want the dungeons to make sense and echo relevant themes, but its so hard to do without being too on-the-nose aaaaaa
> 
> If I add an element that's irrelevant to Gordon, even if its in service of adding to the mystery/paranoia (like having the man and the victim maybe? have been fighting over a woman), then it can be seen as something about his ex or something. Just an example, but its a harder balancing act than I expected. I think I'll be able to explain more about what I meant with each dungeon in the post-canon companion piece.
> 
> Also! This fanfiction now comes in askblog form where you can speak to Gordon directly/make differing choices to organically get another ending if you'd like. It's less serious/more for shenanigans, but there will be art, so check it out: hlshai.tumblr.com


	7. please contact the admin if

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Science Team have a nice night in :) 
> 
> It's what you wanted, right?
> 
> (tws in endnote)

Gordon wasn’t in the apartment when Benry came out of the shower.

Benry stood at the edge of the living room, hair dripping water onto carpet, and glanced around. The bedding he’d been using had been put away and the sink was empty of dirty dishes. The apartment felt too big without Gordon in it somehow, despite the modest dimensions of the room. The clock in the living room ticked away unbothered.

Benry’s lips curled downwards in annoyance. He'd wanted to talk to Gordon some more; the man was much more fun now that he’d lightened up. He flopped down onto the couch with a huff. Go figure that he’d be bailed on again. He always had to catch up with the rest of the team at Black Mesa. Granted, he had a habit of wandering off, but the others could have at least tried to wait up. Stupid Gordon making Benry chase after him. 

The disappointment melted into something different as he turned onto his side and noticed the TV was on. The familiar start screen’s colors swirled on the muted set, a mess of wires leading to where a console sat on the carpet. Gordon had set up the PS4 for him. 

The controller was perched on the edge of the side table near the armchair. It was being used to weigh down a note. He hadn't completely been forgotten this time. Benry moved over to the chair and set the controller in his lap. The overcast light from the window behind him was more than enough to read the note by. 

_‘I went to go get the other Team members. My apartment’s kinda hard to find._ _  
_ _You can play on my PS4 as long as you don’t break anything. Don’t go out!!!_ _  
_ _See you soon!’_

Benry’s imperceptible frown turned into a genuine grin. He scrambled off the chair to see what games Gordon had, almost knocking the coffee table over in his enthusiasm. The CRT TV wasn’t much to play on but it was better than nothing. Benry opened the cabinet under the television and pawed through Gordon’s titles.

Bloodborne, Death Stranding, Control… Benry wasn’t really into horror stuff. He leaned down further, pushing his arm to the back of the cabinet without hesitation. A few games were pushed out onto the floor. Gordon had to have something playable back here. He knew Freeman’s taste was bad but-

“Yoooo, is that fucking, uh, Heavenly Sword?” Benry said, finally pulling the game free. The familiar cover art stared back at him when he examined the box. He set it up as fast as he could; he was going through gaming withdrawals. “Oh, hell yeah.”

Benry hopped back on the couch, perfectly content to game the afternoon away until Gordon came back. 

* * *

There was only so much time someone could play Heavenly Sword. A prickling sense of unease was starting to weigh on him, only getting stronger as he tried to ignore it. Not even Pro Gamers like Benry were immune to the creeping feeling of awkwardness that came from being in someone else’s home alone for too long. How long had it been? Hours? Long enough that even someone as nonchalant as Benry was starting to wonder what was going on. What the hell was keeping Gordon?

Benry stood up and twisted until his lower back cracked. The soft sounds of his paused game drifted from the TV as he paced around the living room to stretch his legs. If Gordon was just going to abandon him in his house… Maybe it was time for some snooping. There had to be something juicy around here that he could tease Gordon about. His friend wouldn’t mind, right? If he just looked through the rooms at what was already out in the open…

Honestly, Gordon should have expected some mischief. He knew what he was getting into.

Benry headed to the door to the left of the entrance, across from the kitchen. He’d assumed it would be a linen closet of some kind, so he was surprised to find an entire laundry room. There was a washer, a dryer, storage shelves, and a ladder leaned against the wall. Benry stood under the bare bulb and idly brushed his fingers through the dust gathered on top of the dryer. The concrete floor under his feet was cold and the air smelt wet, but not unclean. 

A flash of red caught his eye. He reached out, plucking a palm-sized box from the shelf. There were others like it in neat, dustless rows between the larger storage bins. They seemed almost more vibrant than their surroundings. He read the box idly: handgun bullets. He set it back on the shelf. Gordon was a kind of paranoid guy. He didn’t have to worry anymore, though, with Benry there to protect him. 

He ran out of things of interest to look through- all the boxes were filled with Christmas decorations or winter linen or random odds and ends. He headed back into the hall to the last room he hadn’t been in. Gordon’s bedroom. 

Benry’s hand paused over the knob, just for a second, before he let himself in. The door didn’t even creak. The room is a good size, if a little plain, and brightened by the warm light of a few lamps. There was one on the bedside table beside a landline phone, one on the dresser, and one on the desk. A ceiling fan spun lazily above him with its light off. The two windows along the far wall had their shades drawn.  
  
Benry examined the photographs along Gordon’s walls. He had a passing interest in photography himself and he wondered if Gordon shared it. There were a few blown up landscapes, a few artsy prints of random objects in black and white, and one or two portraits. They looked old, though, not family photos. He hadn’t even put up the group photo that the Science Team had taken. Cringe. Maybe he had it in his wallet (like the team dad he was) or something. The thought made Benry smile a little.

Benry sat on the edge of Gordon’s bed. Gordon was one of those savages who put his bed in the middle of the room instead of a corner, with only the headboard touching one of the walls. Benry picked at the blue comforter as he considered the room as a whole. Benry had expected more. There weren’t even any game posters on the walls.

He opened the bedside table. The only thing inside was a leather book with what was once gilded lettering on the front. The pages were all scribbled out when Benry flipped through it. He tossed it back haphazardly. 

“Gordon’s so booooring,” he whined, getting to his feet. He should look for Gordon’s cell phone number and try to call him. He was starting to get hungry anyway. 

The blanket of silence that hovered over the apartment was making the air stale. He returned to the living room and tried to tug open one of the windows. It was stuck tight. He flipped the lock and tried again, and again, but it didn’t want to open. The other one was the same. Had they been painted over? Lame.

Maybe he could let himself out of the apartment, stand outside for a while. There had to be a smoking area or something. He couldn’t find his shoes at the door, but it wasn’t like he really needed them. He was from Xen; bare feet didn’t even register on his danger meter. 

He had just unlatched the deadbolt when the door burst open. It would have flattened his nose if he hadn’t taken an instinctive step back, but he had, so it bounced off the wall with a loud thud instead. There, crowded around the doorway, were the familiar colors and faces of his friends. 

“B-Benry!” Tommy greeted with a wide smile, “you’ve regained c… con… consc… You’re awake!”

Benry’s lips curled upward and a few notes buzzed out of his mouth. _Yellow, green, blue- I’m happy to see you too._ It was good to see his buddies were alright after the boss battle and Black Mesa. It had been unnatural to see Tommy so solemn before; he was supposed to be full of energy. Caffeine did that to you. Benry was pulled into a hug before he had time to answer with words. 

“Yeah. I just had to, uh, respawn. Sorry.”

“Took you long enough,” Bubby said, crossing his arms across his chest, “Can we come in now?”

Benry nodded, pulling out of the hug so that he could move over to the side. The Science Team shuffled passed him into the apartment. Bubby gave Benry an affectionate punch to the shoulder as he passed by. Coomer said it was good to see Benry was feeling better. Gordon smiled at Benry as he grasped his shoulder like he had back in Black Mesa, before the incident.

“Not going to bail on us again, are you? We’re having a movie night and I brought pizza,” Gordon said, readjusting the boxes to show Benry. Benry grinned and took a few of them to lighten Gordon’s load. 

“No way, man, I love movie night.”

“Good,” Gordon said, “The others really missed you. Want to help Bubby set up the movie before he sets something on fire?”

Benry snickered under his breath. He set the pizza on the counter and went to disconnect the PS4. Bubby was already fiddling with the inputs on the TV. 

Gordon turned to the door and shut it. The deadbolt clicked shut. 

* * *

It was a little difficult to watch a movie as it was meant to be watched with the Science Team, but Benry thought it was better this way. Benry kept up a running commentary with Tommy chiming in frequently, Bubby complained about the plot at every turn, and Coomer recited every production fact he could find like he was IMDb. Gordon half-heartedly shushed them, but Benry could tell he was having fun. 

“We’re like, uh, Mystery Science Team Theatre,” Benry said in his deadpan tone. Gordon snorted a laugh into his pizza. 

They watched a few hilariously bad rom-coms before Gordon helped set the TV up for video games again. Not the PS4 this time, sadly, but Benry couldn’t be too mad. It was hard to top the couch co-op of Mario Kart. Bubby picked Bowser almost immediately because he looked the ‘most intimidating’, Tommy picked Yoshi, Coomer was Koopa Troopa, and Gordon picked Luigi. Benry grinned a little when he saw that- he knew Gordon should have had a chicken hat- and forsook his usual Drybones to pick Daisy instead. He made a kissy face at Gordon that was returned with an affectionate eyeroll. 

The game was hardly a match for the ages, but it was fun. Tommy was the best at playing the game; he even picked manual over automatic so he could drift through turns. Bubby kept ramming into people even when it cost him time. It took Coomer a while to get the hang of it, but when he did, he was really good at using the items. Gordon struggled in last place. 

Benry could have smoked them all but he elected to stay with Gordon. Mostly to do doughnuts around him and clown on him for being so bad at Mario Kart. Gordon took his teasing with good grace for once. It made the Sweet Voice in Benry’s stomach dance to hear him laugh with him.

Benry wanted to keep playing until sunrise. He’d missed these people so much. It was nice to hang out under better circumstances. All the same, he found his eyes growing heavy and hands growing clunky as time wore on. He had no need for sleep. That boss battle must have done more of a number on him than expected, if he was genuinely tired. Something vague and nervous buzzed in his chest and along his skin.

“I think it’s time for us to head home, Gordon!” Dr. Coomer said cheerfully, “It was so nice to see both you and Benry well, but it's getting late.”

“Of course,” Gordon said, rising to his feet. He pulled Coomer into a hug. “It was so nice to have you guys over. You know the way here now, so don’t be strangers, okay?”

The Science Team bid their farewells. Benry got pulled into a back-cracking hug by Coomer and another, softer hug by Tommy. Bubby was still prickly, but he also promised to come visit again. Benry and Gordon walked them to the door together.

“Later, skaters,” Benry said. Tommy was the last one out. He gave Benry a half-smile that he couldn’t quite make out, but before he could ponder it too deeply-

Gordon’s chest pressed against his back. One of his hands grasped Benry’s shoulder while the other reached out to shut the door in front of him. His palm pressed against the wood, near the deadbolt, half-boxing Benry in. It was the same casual, easy affection Gordon gave everyone, but it made Benry’s heart flip.

“You look tired. Do you want me to set the couch back up for you?” he asked, voice soft and extremely close to Benry’s ear. Gordon was a furnace. Benry could feel his warmth even through his borrowed hoodie. Benry glanced over his shoulder at him.

“Yeah, uh, that’d be poggers.”

Gordon smiled and backed up, hand still on Benry’s shoulder. He pulled him away from the door. “This will only take a second. Can you put the pizza in the fridge and put away the console?”

“Yeah, man, no problem.” 

As the two of them got ready for bed, darkness wrapped its fingers around Silent Hill. The sky was a starless maw above them. Benry shut his eyes to the world for another night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tws: unreality, invasion of privacy/snooping, gun/firearm (implied, there's bullets), psychological horror, flirting?
> 
> thank you all for being so patient with me! I know this chapter took a while for its length, but I'm trying to avoid burnout. Next chapter might take as long if not longer, but we're finally getting back to the dungeons >:)
> 
> Another askblog session will be held in a few days. If you want to talk to Gordon and Co (or, you know, keep them alive >:3c ) you should head over to hlshai.tumblr.com! 
> 
> I made a discord as well (I'm the only mod though, so if you join when I'm not online membership might take a while): https://discord.gg/B2BYRhGEAb


	8. Silent Hill Police Station

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon goes to pay Bubby's bail
> 
> (tws in endnote)

In the distance, the siren’s mournful cry faded. The darkness scattered like a swarm of cockroaches underfoot.

It wasn’t much of an improvement, but Gordon would take what he could get. He’d learned at Black Mesa that it was better to make the best of a bad situation and move forward. Not like he had a choice. He preferred anyway, between _that_ darkness and the constant fog, that the mist returned. He still couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him, but at least it was a bright kind of blindness.

He reached up and turned off his headlamp. It would give him the chance to save his battery power if nothing else.

The humming had retreated back to the street. He was better prepared to deal with the wasps now that he had a crowbar and a gun. Those meat soldiers… He could handle them, too. As much as he didn’t want to. 

He could never catch a fucking break.

He walked the perimeter of the courtyard, but the only way out was the gate he’d come in from. There was nothing of note inside it but a few overturned grocery carts and a few dead bodies. Gordon’s boots tracked blood as he tread through one of the puddles on his way out.

As soon as he was back on Ellroy Street, he took off at a light jog southward. The roads themselves were still clogged with lights dancing in the mist. Every time he drew too close, the radio he’d shoved into his backpack would shout static into his ear. He couldn’t be snuck up on, but stealth would be hard. 

Bradbury Street connected at Gordon’s right, but there was still a stretch of road left to Ellroy. He could see the outline of buildings in the fog. The dingy light of Silent Hill’s few streetlamps caught on the edges of broken windows. A way inside and, potentially, more supplies within. 

Gordon weighed his options: he had a crowbar now, he needed health drinks and medkits, and buildings he could enter were few and far between. If he could pop in and out quickly, he might actually have something to offer Bubby in case he was hurt. He could even find an important clue or item. The sound of his footfalls echoed as he cautiously walked down the street.

In the fog, dark shapes lumbered aimlessly at the end of the dead end street. Gordon paused as dread churned his stomach. Could he fight outside? In a building he could divide and conquer, but out in the open it was more dangerous. He fumbled for his gun and shoved his crowbar into his belt.

“Dr. Coomer? Tommy?” he called. The shapes turned towards him, bobbing through the air. There were indistinct voices, filtered through the static of his radio, muttering nonsense. He held his breath as his heart sank.

**Foxtrot, India, November, Delta, Foxtrot, Romeo, Echo, Echo, Mike-**

He didn’t wait for the scent of iron to hit his nose. He didn’t even turn around; just took one step backwards, then another, then another… All the way to Bradbury Street. He didn’t want to fight those things more than necessary.

If he was panicked, he didn’t feel it under the numbness that swallowed him like the mist. The fog had started to seep into his hoodie. He could feel the stagnant waters of Toluca on his skin. He shivered, put his head down, and walked a little faster.

There was a road leading south from Bradbury. He tried to walk down it and it felt like he’d run into a wall. Not a literal wall, like he might have while the world was still dark between siren calls, but a dread so intense he stumbled back gasping. Not there. Not yet.

He shoved his shaking hands into his armpits. _Just walk it off, Freeman. You can do this. Just find the police station._ He crossed the street to some boarded-up stores. He still felt compelled to check the entrances. There was Top Sales, Mark Twain Market, a 7/11; all locked, as he’d assumed. He sighed and glanced around. He’d have to backtrack to Blotch Street at this rate. The fog parted around him as he checked for anything he’d missed.

Well… There was a Sundries shop. 

Too bad it was behind what was possibly the most threatening chain link fence Gordon had ever seen.

Gordon had jumped a few fences in his day. This would not be one of them. The winding metal links looked less yielding to him than any high security building.The top of the fence seemed to melt into the fog from where he stood. It could be twenty feet tall or two hundred, for all he knew. 

There were dozens of missing person’s posters fluttering in the still air like uneasy moths. The fence was choked with them. Gordon’s co-workers grinned back at him from yellowed paper. Not just Tommy, Bubby, or Coomer, but all the people he’d seen on a daily basis. The people he couldn’t save from Black Mesa. The impassioned pleas from family and friends were right there in black and white. They asked him to help bring these people home. The people he’d watched get mowed down by aliens, or the military, or his friends-

Gordon shut his eyes and turned around.

He had to get back to Blotch Street.

Gordon half-jogged down the street, trading his gun for his crowbar again. He ran across a few swarms of Will o’ Wasps -they tended to cluster in groups of two or three- and dispatched what he couldn’t outrun. He needed to save ammo in case he got cornered into more of those meat monsters. Gordon swallowed thickly. He was loath to find what fresh horrors awaited him. 

He was finally let back out onto Blotch. There was a Balkan church and the gas station he’d ran past already to his right, so he turned left. He slowed back down to a walk and nervously flipped his crowbar in his hand like a baseball player up to bat. He approached the doors of the stores he passed, but none of them would open for him. 

There was another fence, this time with a gate, blocking off a footpath. It seemed to lead back to Bradbury, but on the other side of that fence. Gordon inspected the ornate padlock. It was heavy and freezing to the touch. This is probably something he’d need to find the key for later. He withdrew uneasily.

He couldn’t enter Cut-Rite Chainsaws or “Shoe Repair and Hat Renovators”. He supposed nothing was allowed to be easy; if he got a circular saw, what would stop him from cutting his way through the fence, padlock be damned? Levin Street, which also led to Bradbury Street, was blocked off by another sinkhole. It was either the footpath or the fence. Gordon pinched the bridge of his nose. Okay, he got it. Thanks.

His luck looked up, at least a little, when he reached the souvenir shop. There was a map of the town taped to the outside of the door. It looked like it had been done in a rush; one of the map’s corners was sagging where the tape had twisted around uselessly and refused to stick to the glass. Gordon tugged it free and plucked off the sticky, plastic webbing. 

Gordon tucked himself into the corner of the entrance way, sitting on the stoop, and retrieved a pen from his backpack. It took him a moment to see where he was in the upper left section of the map. He carefully plotted out where he’d been before; noting sinkholes, locked doors, and places of interest. It felt calming to be able to organise his thoughts. Now, he might actually get somewhere. Where was that police station?

* * *

It turned out it wasn’t as difficult as Gordon was making it. He just needed to go right on Blotch Street, cross the bridge, then the police station would be on his immediate left. Easy.

A little too easy. Gordon could hear the distant humming growing closer; more monsters were coming. How long had he been running around? He had no idea what time it was. He was scared to check his phone; this place seemed to drain battery life like nothing else. Was it going to get dark again soon? Or had it already been days? He had no way of knowing. The world had stopped making sense a long time ago.

He got up from his hiding place and started back down the street. He’d avoid what fights he could. He didn’t have enough ammo or health drinks to risk putting down every monster he came across. He hoped he didn’t come to regret that choice later. 

Gordon approached the bridge with his gun in one hand and his crowbar in the other. He eyed it with suspicion; it looked structurally sound, but was it? The pavement was covered in colorful scribbles that branched out like overgrown ivy. Gordon wondered what they meant, but didn’t look too closely. They looked occult, and he was already cursed enough. 

He stepped out onto the cracked pavement and cocked his gun. Ahead of him, he could see new shapes in the mist. The scent of blood washed over him in nauseating waves. The radio he’d clipped to his belt started to let out a low whine of static and he could hear the voices again. 

**Foxtrot, Romeo, Echo, Echo, Mike, Alpha, November-**

Gordon lifted his weapon, aimed, and fired. Three bullets in quick succession. The last one missed, but the first two hit with a meaty thwack and an audible spray of blood. The radio clipped to his belt screamed in pain. Gordon winced at the pop-pop-pop of the gunfire and readjusted his grip. 

“You’re okay, Gordon,” he muttered.

The other shape drew closer; the mist around it parting like a veil. The grinning skull’s mouth gaped wider and a tongue flopped down from its jaws. The one blue eye rolled in its socket to focus on him. The radio’s static was a demonic hiss that made Gordon’s ears itch all the way down to his sinuses. He turned the gun on the second figure. 

Gordon shut his eyes when he shot it in the head. He didn’t want to see its skull burst like a rubber band-bound watermelon, but he could see it clear as day behind his eyelids anyway. He grit his teeth until they squeaked and walked forward with purpose, trying to trade the pain in his stomach for anger, the encroaching cold for anything else at all. The last Gibbed met him half way.

One, two, three, four- the last one was another headshot. The radio let out a pitiful whine that faded to nothing. The water rushed under the bridge and Gordon’s blood rushed in his ears. He stepped over the corpse and just kept walking, leaving red footprints in his wake.

Gordon jogged up the stairs to the police station. There was a length of chain around the doors secured with a padlock. Gordon fit the key into the lock and braced himself for another round of puzzles. He tried not to be too worried about Bubby; the old man could look after himself just fine until Gordon got there. He wasn’t even surprised when the key snapped in half like the last one did.

Gordon shouldered the door open and let himself in.

He could see blue lights further down the hallway, but they were too far for his radio to pick up on. They hadn’t noticed him without his flashlight’s glare either. He might be able to avoid a fight for the time being if he was careful. His sneakers squeaked softly against the tile floors.

There was a metal door to his immediate right that he could just make out in the darkness, but it was locked when he jiggled the handle. The wall was damp and somewhat slimy when he put his hand against it to guide himself further down the hall. There was water dripping from somewhere. His hand landed on a push handle. This time, the door opened for him. He stepped inside.

The radio remained quiet at Gordon’s hip, so he turned his flashlight back on. He was in some kind of reception or waiting room. It was ruined; only a few toppled chairs, a cork board with flyers, a rotting magazine rack, and the front desk remained. Several ceiling tiles had fallen to the ground and were now rotting. Gordon approached the front desk and vaulted over it.

There wasn’t much of use, just rotten papers and an unusable telephone. He did find a box of handgun bullets tucked into the back of one of the drawers though, so that was something. 

The wall behind the desk was taken up by a mural of Lady Justice, her paint cracking into uneven hexagons and lifting in places. Her face was more plaster than paint chips. A banner above her head read Silent Hill Police Department. Her arm, oddly enough, wasn’t part of the painting. It was a statute that reached out of the wall itself and held a pair of real scales. Gordon touched the metal rim of one and wiped away a layer of dust. The metal hummed like a singing bowl. There was an object on each side, so he pulled them out to inspect them.

One was a dog plushie that looked oddly new. It seemed to be weighted; too heavy for what it was when he held it. The other was Bubby’s brass knuckles. Gordon squeezed the cool metal object in his hand, heart leaping hopefully, before tucking both items safely away in his backpack. There was a heavy security door beside the mural, tucked into the corner. A four digit combination lock was embedded into it and there were scratches in the paint. Gordon examined it.

Above the lock, there were crude drawings of the plushie and the brass knuckles. It said ‘plushie = 3’ and ‘brass knuckles = 2’. There were other symbols drawn under each of the dials on the combination lock: a circle, a square, an ‘X’, and a triangle. Gordon’s eyes skirted back to the scales. He had an idea where they were going with this, but it meant he needed to find the other pieces of the puzzle. 

He tried the handle anyways out of hopeless optimism, but no dice. Gordon sighed and reloaded his gun before hopping back over the counter. 

On his way out, a flash of white caught his eye from the magazine rack where before there was only muddled grey and black mold. Gordon almost wanted to walk right on by it, but he knew that probably wouldn’t be allowed. He breathed out from his nose and approached the paper, plucking it from the rack with two fingers like it would bite him. 

_Subject: G_ _█████_ _F_ _██████_

 _Status: C_ _██_ _fin_ _█_ _d_ _  
_ _  
_ _Subject is a 2_ _█_ _y/o_ _█████_ _man,_ _█_ _’_ _█_ _feet tall and_ _███_ _lbs. Subject left_ _███ ██████_ _on O_ _█_ _to_ _██_ _r 10th,_ _████_ _and arrived in S_ _█████_ _H_ _███_ _██_ _hours later after_ _█████ ██████████_ _. Subject shows symptoms of_ _█████_ _,_ _████_ _,_ _████████_ _, and_ _███████_ _._

_███████_ _to begin_ _██████_ _._

Gordon frowned down at the paper. He wasn’t sure he liked that. He slipped the paper into his backpack all the same, just in case there was a clue he was missing. He headed out into the hallway and tried to make it to the next door, but the Will o’ Wasps had drifted closer. They spotted him right away and flew towards him, buzzing like chainsaws. He pulled out his gun and put them down with one shot each. There were three staticky screams from down the hall.

Gordon nearly tripped over himself in his rush to open the door. When it actually opened, he threw himself into the new room with wild abandon. The door clicked shut behind him and he breathed out slowly. His heart was a jackhammer in his chest. The room was lit, for once, with bare fluorescent rods that flickered valiantly overhead. A row of holding cells was to his right and plain white brick to his left. The room smelt just as rotten as all the others.

At the other end of the hall, a couple of Gibbed milled aimlessly. Gordon let his head fall back against the door with a dull thud.

“Oh, you have got to be fucking with me…” 

That was probably very true, actually. Gordon got the sense that this place had a very sick sense of humor. They were turned away from him, so he entered the first cell that was open, the second from the door. At least he’d be out of sight and could gather himself to fight when he was ready. His stomach still churned from his last round with those things.

The cell was small and sparse with only a rotting bunk and a smashed toilet. Gordon closed the cell door as quietly as he could, careful not to let it latch. He sat down on the bed and wrinkled his nose. It smelt disgusting, but beggars can’t be choosers. Something rolled under the blankets and bumped his knee. Gordon leaped to his feet with a suppressed scream. 

There was a strange lump in the sheets. After a moment of hesitation, Gordon carefully pulled back the covers...

...It was a blowtorch. On its tank was painted a large, black ‘X’. Gordon shoved the object into his backpack. Time to keep moving. He stood back up, took a few deep breaths, and pulled the cell door open. 

It scraped across the floor with a metallic scream that could have woken the dead. Unfortunately, the dead were already awake. The radio at his side began to scream and he desperately wished to cover his ears.

Gordon swore under his breath and immediately tried to duck into the next cell. It was locked. The corpses were floating towards him with chattering jaws and outstretched hands. There was skin sloughing off of their boney fingers in leathery pieces. Gordon fumbled for his gun and, failing to pull it free, tried for the next cell door. Locked.

“Shit, shit, shit- oh, FUCK!”

Before he could see if the third time's the charm, another Gibbed stepped out into the hallway from a cell ahead of him. He could see its sinew, how weirdly wet it was-

Too close, _too close, TOO CLOSE-_

His brain screamed as white-hot panic stabbed through his sternum. 

It slashed at him with its boney claws within inches of gouging out an eye. Gordon leaned back to avoid it, overbalanced, and fell right on his ass. He finally pulled his handgun out from his waistband with the jarring movement of falling onto concrete. He barely had it pointed at the monster before he was squeezing the trigger. 

The sound was unbearably loud in such close quarters- one, two. The first hit landed on the monster’s shoulder, ripping away chunks of bone, and the second blew a crater in its face. The monster screamed and fell to the ground as it was cut off from whatever otherworldly strings kept it afloat. 

It landed right in Gordon’s lap. A solid, meaty weight. He was kinda glad he didn’t eat today; he didn’t want to add to, well, _this_. Not that it was easy to be ‘glad’ right now. 

The floor was icy cold under him as hot blood soaked through his jeans and started to pool under it. Him. Them. 

Through the gaps in its ribs and scapula, Gordon could see the valves and chambers of its heart. He watched its lungs deflate completely with the softest sigh from out of the chasm of its-

The shattered edges of bone were snagging on his hoodie from where its ruined face was cradled against his stomach. 

At some point, he’d started to hyperventilate. 

Two more staticky screams poured out from his radio. Gordon grit his teeth and glanced upwards. Too close. Much too close, too much- Gordon couldn’t move. The body was too heavy. His face and hands were numb. There were black spackles at the edges of his vision.

His hand closed around his gun and he lifted it as if through treacle. His arm was shaking badly. He fired off a shot without meaning to and shrieked in fear. The corpses were undeterred, but it was enough to snap him out of it. Just enough to lift his other hand to steady his shooting arm. 

He tried not to think about how the carcass in his lap shifted when he sat up straighter to take aim. He waited, counting his breaths, as the monsters drew closer. He couldn’t miss. He squeezed the trigger again and blew one of their heads clean off. He swallowed thickly and aimed at the other.

His hands were shaking too bad. A shot and a miss. Another shot and a miss. He landed the last headshot and finally shoved the corpse out of his lap.

“FUCK! _FUCK!_ ” he shouted, stumbling to his feet and away from the bodies as fast as possible. He gagged and swallowed again. Gordon stumbled into one of the open prison cells as random and collapsed onto the bed. “GOD _DAMMIT_!”

It took several minutes for his breathing to calm. He was still shaking, but he could handle that. As long as he could breathe. In and out. Just calm down. The radio had fallen silent, there weren’t any other monsters nearby.

He wiped his bloodied hands on the bedspread and checked his magazine- one left inside and two bullets left in the box. He swore again. He reloaded what he had and prayed he’d find more soon. He really didn’t want to get up close and personal to those things to kill them. Granted, not even the gun had helped with that a few minutes ago. 

Gordon got out of the bunk and stretched. He was still shaking, but he knew he couldn’t stall anymore. He had his friends to find and the sooner he did that, the sooner they could all go home. There was a metallic clatter as he knocked something onto the floor.

A key labelled ‘Cell Block C’. Why was a police station big enough to need blocks of holding cells? He shoved the key into his pocket, scrunching his nose at the stickiness of drying blood. He’d need to burn these jeans after. 

The only other cell with anything in it was the last one of the hall. Gordon found another bottle of Health Drink sitting at the foot of the bed. It felt like a tiny miracle and he was grateful for it. 

He put his handgun back into his waistband. It was probably a good idea to save his ammo… He was confident that he could deal with the bugs and corpses for now, so it was better to save the bullets for creatures he wasn’t sure how to deal with. It was back to his old trusty crowbar until he found ammo. 

Gordon left the cell block and returned to the main hallway. It must have run the entire length of the building, dividing it in half. He could still hear the staticky murmurs up ahead. He let out a soft breath and flicked on his flashlight. No use fighting in the dark. There were two more Gibbed at the end of the hallway. They turned towards him and screamed. Gordon rolled his shoulders a few times as they drew closer. 

He was already so tired. 

Gordon couldn’t take much more of this. 

His attacks were slow and sloppy, but they got the job done. He crushed their skulls and rib cages until they fell to the ground. There was only adrenaline roaring in his ears when he stomped on the squishy organs underneath. The static quieted again- from the radio and in his mind.

He felt strange and empty as he tried the next door on his left. It was locked. He couldn’t even work up the ire to be annoyed about it before he moved on. The next door was the same unyielding material and design as the last cell block, and it was locked, so he tried his key for Cell Block C. It opened.

His radio whined. 

The third cell from the entrance had its door ripped off its hinges like an explosion had happened inside. There was blood splashed out of the doorway from within, dark like the color of arterial spray. It reminded Gordon of the wall to wall room of blood from the apartments. 

Gordon had no choice but to go inside and kill it. He would have just locked it in, but the door wasn’t usable anymore. His hands were dripping crimson and shaking before he finally stopped bashing its head against the wall. He tossed the body aside in disgust.

He’d wanted to make it quick, but the thing just wouldn’t stop _screaming_ at him. 

There were another two boxes of bullets on top of the toilet tank. He reloaded the rest of his magazine. Ten shots were better to have on hand than three. 

The next few cells were empty besides being choked in graffiti and suspicious black stains. Gordon brushed his fingers over the angry carvings and scrawled words. Names of those that came before, dates, and short messages like ‘something’s happening’ and ‘i like pizza’. Gordon wondered if these were messages left by real people, from before the coal fire, or if the town was lying to him again. There was even a heart with ‘█ + B’ engraved inside. 

Gordon drew away from the nonsense with a shake of his head. He had to keep moving. The radio at his side started to whine as the distant humming he’d been ignoring grew louder. 

Gordon barely had time to react before three Will o’ Wasps flew through one of the cement walls that led to an adjoining cell. Not a hole in the wall, but the wall itself. It was like they’d become intangible.

Gordon shouted in surprise and he ducked under one of them as it struck. He avoided getting a needle in the eye by inches, the wasp cutting along his cheekbone with it instead. He retaliated by smacking it across the room with the butt of his gun. He hurried to cock his weapon. 

He put as much distance as he could between himself and the wasps, but the cell was small. It made it impossible to miss, at least, and he put down each bug with a single shot. His ears were left ringing and he felt dizzy by the end of it. 

Gordon removed his glasses and rubbed a hand over his grubby face. He couldn’t keep zoning out like this. It was dangerous. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and slapped himself. _Wake up, Gordon. Keep your wits about you._ It lifted the haze, if only a little. 

He put his glasses back on and resumed the search. The next cell over, where the wasps had come from, was locked. Two of the remaining cells held nothing of interest, but one of the others held a key without a label and another puzzle item. It was a police baton with a circle carved into the handle. 

The last room he checked had another note.

_Subject arrived in S_ _█████_ _H_ _███_ _at_ _█_ _o’ clock the next day. The subject was_ _███_ _ced to vacat_ _█_ _██_ _hicle and go_ _██_ _foot after en_ _█████_ _ering a barrica_ _██_ _. The subject spent_ _████_ _time exploring the area before_ _███_ _ing across a_ _████_ _and chas_ _███_ _after the_ _█████_ _. Subject was in_ _█████_ _but managed_ _██_ _flee_

Gordon tried to make out the words through the ink splotches, but most of what he got was a sense of unease. He tucked the note into his backpack slowly. Gordon left the cell block to investigate the rest of the hallway. The new key was burning a hole in his pocket; he needed to find the door it went to. Every opened door was one step closer to the Science Team. 

The next door, almost exactly across the hall, was open. He pushed it open a crack and paused. His radio gave a vague hum, but no static. There were probably monsters nearby, but not close enough to be an immediate threat. He opened the door the rest of the way. 

Something turned to greet him.

Gordon scrambled for his gun- it was floating, like the Gibbed, but it wasn’t one of the corpses he’d been fighting. It looked like one of the scientists from Black Mesa, but warped. Disproportionate. Its hands were folded neatly in front of it. It looked like one solid mass with the fingers textured on. All of it did, actually, like it was one complete shape. A statue. At least the Gibbed had articulation.

It was skewed, hanging mid-air on a slight angle, turning on an axis to look at Gordon. Its face was obscured in shadows. Two pinpricks of light was all that signalled its gaze. Its textures looked too real against its strange form.

Gordon sunk five bullets into it until he realized it wasn’t doing any good. They passed right through the entity like it wasn’t there. It made no movement towards Gordon. 

He leaned to the left and it turned to follow him. He leaned to the right and it did the same thing. Its lab coat fluttered with the movement like an afterthought. 

Gordon shut the door.

“Fuck that.” 

He continued up the hallway. His fingers were beginning to ache with how hard he was clutching his gun, but he didn’t dare loosen them. His palms were sweaty. He sighed out a curse as his radio started to whine as he approached the next door.

It was boarded up, but he could hear humming from within. That meant there were monsters inside. That meant there might be something important.

That meant he’d have to get in there somehow, eventually.

Just perfect.

The next room’s door wasn’t locked when he turned the handle. Gordon took a deep breath and opened it as the scream of his radio matched the screams from inside. He took one look at the Gibbed and shut the door again. The sound was instantly strangled.

Gun? Or crowbar? He debated wasting more ammo over having to get close to those things again. He tilted his head and hummed. That old rage was returning. It tended to come in waves. It was a comforting weight around his shoulders, in his gut. 

Fuck it, crowbar. He kicked open the door. “Alright, fuckers-!”

-

It felt unnatural, to be so used to the blood and gore already. The pulpy mass of splintered bone and splattered meat in the center of the room barley even churned his stomach. It was hard to experience worse than one of those things dying on top of him, right?

Gordon knocked on the wood of the desk immediately. It was bad to tempt fate like that; now that he thought of it, he was sure Silent Hill had more horrible surprises in store. 

The room was small and dark. It looked like it had been an office for one of the policemen, or maybe a filing room. There was a wall of filing cabinets to the left, after all. Gordon’s fingers brushed over one of the painted-on cabinet handles before he decided to leave them alone. Nothing in there for him. There was another box of bullets tucked behind a cup full of pens. 

Gordon pulled on each of the desk’s drawers on a whim. He rattled each of their handles to no avail. Dr. Coomer could have just punched the thing to pieces like he’d done with all those crates back in Black Mesa. Let’s see Silent Hill keep things from him then.

Gordon sighed and punched the top of the desk.

Something clicked. He paused.

He tried the drawers again. The right uppermost drawer opened with the whisper-quiet grind of wood on wood. There was a spiral-bound notebook inside. He set his crowbar on the desk and lifted it with both hands. He flipped through the pages.

_█████_ _arrived today._ _█ █████_ _I’m happy._

_We_ _███ ██_ _stay so_ _██_ _where th_ _█_ _t_ _██████ █████ ████_ _the r_ _██_ _l world,_ _█████████_ _safe. It’s b_ _█_ _tter than what it_ _███ ████_ _for me before. Nonex_ _██████_ _._ _███████_ _ing. Am I_ _███_ _? Or did_ _███_ _see fit to_ _███████ ██ ████_ _what I am? I’m not_ _██████_ _. I just_ _████ ████ ███_ _. I know that much._

_It’s my job to st_ _█_ _y here_ _████_ _him and ke_ _██_ _him con_ _████_ _._ _████ █████_ _ing our own rules, aren’t we? No w_ _██ ██_ _esc_ _███_ _... but_ _████_ _st_ _██_ _ving. I don’t see how we could do anything else. We’re b_ _████_ _█_ _ice, anyway._ _███_ _luckier than_ _███ ██████_ _._

_███ ██████_ _, ha. I guess_ _██_ _ing ni_ _██_ _isn’t my_ _████_ _job. I have to t_ _█████_ _t_ _██████_ _too. If I_ _████_ _him, will I_ _██████_ _him? Will I get to_ _████ ████ ████_ _, even when_ _█████_ _is_ _███████_ _? I want that. I want to_ _████_ _._

_I want to_ _████_ _._

Gordon dropped the notebook. The words had bled from water damage and the entire thing gave him an uneasy feeling. The pages had felt uncomfortably damp against his fingers. It landed on the tile floor with a soft splat. It was still bleeding. There was red against the black like morbid, silent fireworks. Gordon snatched his crowbar and took a step back. There was a wet, sucking sound from the pages as they dissolved into unreadable goop.

The left uppermost drawer started to tremble. Black bile and red ink poured from the gap between drawer and desk. Gordon took another step back. 

The drawer meowed.

“Oh no.”

The drawer shook violently. 

The entire desk pounded against the wall and floor as the meows inside turned into pained yowls. 

He ran away.

He’d ran out of doors in the hallway to check so he started to backtrack. There was only one door in this hall that was locked instead of inaccessible. The door between the reception area and the room with that… thing. The floating, slanted thing. The key sunk into the lock effortlessly. He turned the door handle and the key snapped in two like the others. 

The Gibbed inside the room didn’t surprise him anymore. He was more interested in the two health drinks he saw on the floor between himself and the monster. He didn’t hesitate to pull his gun. The creature’s jaw hung open at an odd angle. 

There was nothing interesting about the room after he’d killed the monster and pocketed the health drinks. He still checked it over carefully, since it was the last room he had access to. The desks and chairs were all overturned and pushed towards the walls. The middle of the floor was clear except for the rapidly cooling body of the monster.

Gordon shoved over a bookshelf on the other side of the room. There was another door.

He took a deep breath and tried it.

It opened to another hallway. It was dim and empty. The air was cold and watery. At his side, his radio made no sound besides the quiet hiss of dead air. The sound of water dripping was back. He stopped despite himself to listen. Every pause between droplets was a small eternity.

_Plink… plink… plink…_

There weren’t any monsters that he could see, but he turned up his radio anyway. Just in case.

There was a blocked off exit in front of him and a door with a broken lock one down from where he was standing. There was no door to the room directly across from that. It looked to be some kind of breakroom. Gordon’s feet felt like lead as he dragged himself across the threshold. 

It was like stepping into a dust-smothered, greyscale memory. The table, the counter, the vending machines, the microwave… Gordon gave the microwave a weary side-eye as he crossed the room. One of the vending machines was for Sunkist soda and related products. The other was for health drinks. He didn’t have any money, but he didn’t really need it when he had a crowbar. He pocketed the two health drinks that had been in the machine.

He approached the bulletin board ( _billboard_ , a memory of Tommy chimed) on the far wall. There were advertisements for an upcoming musical adaptation of Rocky at Silent Hill’s Artaud Theater, a few memos left behind by the people who worked here, and another lab report.

_Subject is m_ _██_ _ing steady progr_ _██_ _through_ _██████████ ██████████_ _. He’s shown so_ _██_ _ap_ _███_ _ude with a cr_ _████_ _r, b_ _██_ _he’s_ _█████_ _wor_ _██████_ _and n_ _██_ _ds to be_ _████_ _ected by his st_ _██████_ _,_ _██████ ███_ _ends. Subject has fail_ _██_ _his fr_ _███_ _ds a_ _█_ _d l_ _█_ _ft the_ _█_ _t_ _█ ██_ _e. He ne_ _██_ _r_ _████████_ _th_ _██_ _in the fir_ _█_ _t_ _███_ _ce be_ _█████_ _he’s an_ _███████_ _ble we_ _████_ _._

Gordon hesitantly put it in his bag with the others. He felt something hot prickle on the back of his neck- like an angry glare or an unkind word. He felt sick. Something about this place made him want to crawl out of his skin.

He headed back across the hallway. There were washrooms here for the employees to use; gentlemen and ladies. He headed into the gentlemen’s washroom first. 

The floor was covered in stagnant water; the burst pipes trickled quietly in the background. The sinks, toilets, and urinals had been reduced to shards of dirty porcelain. The metal that had once made up the washroom stalls was crushed and twisted like something huge had crushed it in its palm. The walls were streaked with scorch marks and black mold. 

There was a heap of bloodied lab coats piled in the center of the room. A strange, distant ringing lay under the silence of the room. Gordon tried not to look directly at it. 

“Oh, fuck off,” he snapped and slammed the door shut. 

The ladies’ room next door was just as empty and creepy. It was in better repair than the men’s room, although the wall the rooms shared was coated in the same black mold, and the mirrors were similarly shattered. He pulled out his crowbar and checked the stalls for supplies. They were empty; the last stall wouldn’t even open. Gordon thought better of knocking. He didn’t know what he’d do if something knocked back.

The door across the hall was already cracked open. The room beyond still held an aura of meticulous organization and grandeur, even dusty and water-damaged as it now was. 

Gordon paced along the perimeter of the room to examine the certificates and accolades displayed proudly on the walls. This office must have belonged to someone important or, at least, someone who was full of themselves. He gave the desk a wide berth for now as he checked filing cabinets that wouldn’t open and shelves that held nothing of importance. There was an adjoining room and what looked like a closet, both locked. 

Finally, Gordon could avoid the desk no longer, despite his new reservations. He sidled up to it, sneakers squishing through puddles on the tile floor, like he was expecting it to bite him. It just might, actually. He reminded himself to mind the drawers as he checked them. He didn’t want to lose a finger. 

The stationary on the desk was all arranged neatly. Gordon ran a finger through the thick dust on the mahogany surface then, after a moment of deliberation, extended the line into a drawing of a smiley face. His lips quirked upwards despite himself. He added a cowboy hat to the happy face and sighed.

There were pictures on the desk. Gordon picked one up and wiped the grime off the glass with the flat side of his fist. There was another man and a woman, both their faces rotten away, and a child between them. There was a painful twinge inside Gordon’s chest-

-and a soft cooing from the adjoining room. 

Gordon froze. He set the picture frame with care. It didn’t even click against the desk.

“Hello?” he called.

The sound continued. It was soft, barely audible, but Gordon was hyper aware of it. He approached the door with trepidation. Had someone really left their kid here? He pressed his ear to the wood of the door.

“Hello?!” he called again. His heart stuck in his throat and he couldn’t swallow around it. He tried the doorknob again. It rattled but refused to open; locked, but openable. If he could find the key. He shut his eyes tightly and focussed on the sounds. His radio wasn’t blaring, so it had to be safe.

“Hold on, okay? I’ll save you.”

He rushed out of the room to find the next open door. There were only five doors left in this hallway; three of them were inaccessible and one was locked. Gordon entered the first of the unlocked doors, a narrow closet filled with cleaning materials. He scrunched up his nose at the overwhelming smell of disinfectant and other chemicals. It reminded him of the labs back at Black Mesa. The floor was unpleasantly sticky under his shoes like the glue floor of a roach motel. He dug through the boxes for something useful. The darkness was like reaper's cloth wherever his flashlight wasn’t pointed. He felt something he hoped was a cobweb brush over his cheek. 

His fingers closed around another health drink and his heart leaped into his throat again. He felt the piercing eyes of something on his shoulder. His brain screamed ‘bait!’ and, before he could process it, he reacted to it. Gordon recoiled with the force of the thought and slammed his back into one of the shelves in the narrow space. He hissed a curse word under his breath as he scrambled backwards out the door. 

He fell back into the hallway, breathing heavily. He looked back up at the door. He didn’t know what he was expecting; maybe for it to slam shut? For something to be standing there? There was nothing but papers fluttering to the floor from where he’d upset the box they’d sat in for God knows how long. His cheeks burned and he slapped a hand to his forehead. _Keep it together. Your friends are counting on you. Keep it together._

A paper came to rest at his feet and he picked it up gingerly.

_Subject rep_ _█████_ _ly_ _██_ _fers_ _██_ _his pr_ _██_ _eny; a_ _███_ _named_ _████_ _ua. A preli_ _██████_ _search_ _████_ _███_ _subject’s record_ _█_ _show that_ _██_ _████_ _█████_ _██████_ _. The_ _███_ _ject is,_ _██_ _███_ _l acc_ _█████_ _, a l_ _█████_ _█████_ _n. He_ _████_ _ives e_ _███_ _yon_ _█_ _he_ _████_ _s ab_ _███_ _███_ _█_ _on to lo_ _██_ _████_ _████_ _etic._ _███_ _████_ _██_ _s_ _████_ _h_ _█_ _███_ _has died._

Gordon shoved it into his backpack. No. He wasn’t going to let this place get into his head any more than he already was. He was just being paranoid. One last door. Just one more room and he could see what was up with the office, maybe finally get into the armory. He had to be close to finding Bubby by now.

His radio started to buzz as he approached the last door. He paused in the hallway, closed his eyes, and strained his ears. There was humming- Will o’ Wasps. This must be the other side of the blocked room he’d seen before. If there were enemies in there, there might be supplies. 

Gordon cocked his handgun. He counted to three with his hand on the knob before throwing the door open. His radio screamed in proximity to three wasps and he grit his chattering teeth against the vibration of the insects. He had to duck under one as it tried to dive-bomb him, stinger shiny and poised for his throat. He lifted his weapon and turned it into green mist. The other two fell soon after. 

“Fuck wasps,” he groaned, shaking himself off. Those things gave him the willies. “Fuck all bugs, actually.”

This was another office or filing room. It was less impressive than the last one. Gordon tugged on the filing cabinet handles, wanting to be thorough, and was surprised when one actually opened. There weren’t any files in it. Instead, wrapped in stained tissue paper, there were a set of laboratory beakers. 

Gordon carefully lifted them out of the drawer to examine them closer. Across the four test tubes, someone had scored the glass to make a triangle when they were placed side by side. Gordon put it in his backpack with his snacks for cushioning and reminded himself to fall on his front until he solved the puzzle. 

He checked the desk last. He pulled open the drawers one by one with the care of someone defusing a bomb. They were all empty except for one that held a single key. There was a label attached to it, but Gordon couldn’t make it out.

‘███H█A’

He knew where this key went, nevertheless. It was time to return to the large office and see what was behind that door. 

Gordon’s face was numb with dread as he returned to the room. The cooing seemed louder now. His feet dragged along the floor as he rubbed his thumb over the key, approaching the door it belonged to. It was now or never. He took a deep breath.

“Hold on, buddy,” he murmured as he fit the key into the lock. It turned with a deafening click.

The cooing stopped.

Gordon pushed open the heavy wooden door, but there was nothing inside except for another key on the ground. Gordon swallowed thickly as he stooped to pick it up. The label attached read ‘closet’. He glanced around the tiny room again but there were no vents, no furniture, nowhere that someone could hide. 

There was a cold pit in his stomach when he wordlessly left, returning to the office. 

He fit the key into the closet door and let himself in. He reached up to pull the light cord on instinct and clasped hands with the severed limb hanging from it. 

* * *

It was a wax hand, of course, but Gordon didn’t know that when he’d touched it. He’d screamed and thrown it away from himself and it had swung back on the cord, hitting him right in the mouth. He clutched his face with a muffled cry. The hand fell back down and turned on the light with its weight.

There was a square carved into the palm. Gordon let out a shaky breath and carefully untied it. 

Besides the hand, there wasn’t much else. A few boxes and another lab coat. “I guess that’s for me, right?” he chuckled and rifled through the coat’s pockets. He laughed louder when his fingers brushed against paper.

_The subje_ _██_ _█████_ _to know_ _██████_ _sciously th_ _██_ _█_ _he Re_ _███████_ _████_ _ade was_ _███ █████_ _. If he had_ _██_ _██████_ _██_ _the experi_ _████_ _,_ _████_ _of those_ _████████_ _people_ _█████_ _have_ _████_ _. He got an_ _███_ _██_ _the peop_ _██_ _████_ _nd him but he w_ _██_ _███_ _lly_ _██_ _gry with_ _███_ _self. He s_ _████_ _d do_ _████_ _████_ _and let_ _███ ████_ _eat hi_ _█_ _._

_J_ _██_ _p into_ _███_ _m_ _█_ _w, G_ _█████_ _._

Gordon ran a hand through his messy hair in frustration. He was going to lose his mind if he didn’t find the others soon. He couldn’t make heads or tails of this. 

He had all the pieces of the scale puzzle now, so he headed back to the reception area. The police station was quiet and dark; he’d beaten back all the ghoulies. For now, at least.

Gordon set out his items on the front desk. He needed to find the value of each item to figure out the code on the armory door using Lady Justice’s scales. There were two objects whose value he knew: the dog plushie was ‘3’ and the brass knuckles were ‘2’. The four objects whose value he didn’t know were the baton (circle), the test tubes (triangle), the blowtorch (X), and the hand (square).

The brass knuckles and baton were the same weight. Circle = 2.

The baton and the test tubes were equal to the plushie. Triangle = 1.

The baton, test tubes, and plushie were equal to the blowtorch. X = 6.

The plushie and the brass knuckles were equal to the wax hand. Square = 5.

If the door wanted the values for the circle, square, ‘X’, and triangle in that order, then the code would be…

Gordon flicked the dials to 2561 and tried the doorknob. It turned, then clicked, then Gordon was shouldering the heavy door open. He let out a sigh of relief. 

The armory was smaller than he was expecting; shelving units lined the walls, mostly empty, but with three boxes of handgun bullets scattered among them. The middle of the room had a metal table with a single bare bulb lit on a string above it. 

On the table was a shotgun and two boxes of shotgun bullets.

“Am I ever glad to see you,” Gordon murmured as he snatched up the gun and loaded it. It could take six bullets at once. It was less than his handgun, but it would be stronger too. He shoved the extra ammo into his backpack. 

He was about to leave when something shiny caught his eye from under one of the shelves. He pulled out his crowbar and fished it out. It was a set of keys; one was a key labelled ‘Cell Block D’ and the other was an old paddle key with no marks. A cell key.

Bubby.

Gordon mounted the shotgun on his back and headed out to the hallway. He never thought he’d be so excited to see Bubby in his life. Not even the man’s cranky attitude would be able to put him down. Cell Block D was just on the other end of the station. On second thought, he grabbed the brass knuckles on the way out of reception.

As he started his trek, the darkness pulled in close. Gordon tried to think about anything other than the bodies of dead monsters he was stepping over, but his mind was no refuge. He had to wonder if this was another of Silent Hill’s cruel tricks. It had been messing with him since he entered it. All those notes… They’d been too ominous for comfort. They stuck in his mind. They could have been about anyone, of course, but he knew they were meant for him. 

Gordon shook his head. He didn’t know what was real in this town. 

The key fit in the lock without a fight and he shoved open the door.

“Bubby?” Gordon called hopefully.

“...Gordon?” 

“Bubby!” he shouted, dark musings forgotten. He ran down the hallway and skid to a stop in front of the cell door. His heart leaped when he caught sight of the familiar leather jacket and scowl. The expression was more confused than irritated, however, which was the first bad sign.

“What are you doing here?” Bubby snapped.

“I came to get you and the others,” Gordon said, puzzled, “what else would I be doing?”

“Is Mr. Coolatta with you?”

A shot of icy dread flashed up Gordon’s spine. Oh. Tommy’s dad. He remembered what he’d meant to do before leaving. “Um, no. I didn’t tell him.”

“You didn’t tell him?! Are you a fucking moron?!” Bubby shouted, grabbing the bars of his cell and startling the wits out of Gordon. “What did I tell you? You weren’t supposed to come here! Now we’re all doomed!”

“What?!” Gordon shouted back,”What the hell are you talking about? You’re the one who told me to come to Silent Hill! You and the others!”

“I never told you that! Didn’t you hear me on the phone? Wait- you talked to the others?!”

Gordon let out a frustrated sound and pulled out his phone, battery life be damned. He opened his text messages and passed it to Bubby through the bars. Predictably, there still was no signal.

Bubby frowned at the screen for a few minutes before a touch of fear entered his eyes. “Oh shit. I never sent this.”

“What?”

“I never sent this. I was captured right after my phone call with you. I still have my phone, but-”

The elderly man handed over his own cell phone. There were no such sent messages from his end. Gordon felt sick. “Oh,” he croaked, “do you think the others-?”

“I don’t know,” Bubby said, handing Gordon’s phone back with more aggression than needed, “we should find them and figure out a way to contact Mr. Coolatta. Do you have a key?”

“Huh?” Gordon asked, still trying to process the idea of someone impersonating all his friends.

“The key to the cell, dumbass.”

“Oh, I-”

Wait. Someone impersonating all his friends. Gordon gripped his crowbar like his life depended on it, knuckles turning white. Bubby raised his eyebrow at him. 

“I-”

This was… This was the real Bubby, right?

Right?

  
_Let Bubby Out, Arm Him - Let Bubby Out - Leave him Behind_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tws: unreality, body horror, violence/blood/gore, emetophobia/vomiting (mention), insect/needles, panic attacks/depersonalization/mentions of feeling numb, psychological horror/disturbing themes, police/law enforcement, unsanitary (mold, blood, etc), death/corpses, themes of confinement, guilt, paranoia, impersonation 
> 
> Thank you dimwick for beta-reading this chapter and everyone else who humored me while I tried to get this done!
> 
> I really did say that this chapter wouldn't be as long as the other dungeon, huh? I sure did say that. I'm a liar lol. Once again, it's AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION TIME! Is this the real Bubby? You decide!
> 
> askblog version of this AU: https://hlshai.tumblr.com/  
> discord server: https://discord.gg/6C42PNPs


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